Itzhak Perlman: American Masters

Ernest Hemingway: Rivers To The Sea

More than 40 years after his death, Hemingway is one of the most widely read, and widely written about, American authors. His distinct style and profound influence are indisputable; his larger-than-life persona is still the stuff of heated debate. As well-known in his lifetime as any movie star, Hemingway was a dashing international figure who challenged the notion that writers exist in an ivory tower. There were the battles, the bull fights, the big game, the booze - and he channeled these experiences into stark prose, creating a new form of expression, describing action and emotion in simple, authentic terms. An enormous critical success, his major works - The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls - are still in print, some in as many as 20 languages. The recent excitement over Cuba's release of its Hemingway collection is unmatched in modern literature. It is the literature - the written word and the art of Hemingway's storytelling - that forms the heart and the freshness of this film, and the point of departure from which Hemingway's life and work are uniquely explored. Kate Burton is the storyteller.