The Old Man and Hemingway

The first thing one notices about Gregorio Fuentes is his eyes. ?Everything about him was old except his eyes…? was the way that Hemingway described Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. Out of a 102 year-old face that is as worn as the side of a mountain, Gregorio?s eyes shine brightly. Gregorio was Hemingway?s boat-captain from 1938 until Hemingway?s death in 1961, and provided the template for several Hemingway characters including the old fisherman Santiago. After Hemingway?s death, Gregorio gave up fishing, refusing the many offers that he received to serve as a boat captain for others. The Old Man and Hemingway is a documentary that chronicles the long friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Gregorio, his boat captain, and the way that forty years after his death, Hemingway is remembered by his friend. Filmed on location in Cuba, in the fishing village of Cojimar just outside of Havana that served as the real life backdrop to Hemingway?s The Old Man and the Sea. The Old Man and Hemingway is dedicated to its subject Gregorio Fuentes who passed away in 2002 at the age of 104.