About the Film

Key West: Bohemia in the Tropics is a lively account of a largely unknown story: how a radical government experiment in community building during the Great Depression helped launch the laid-back, anything-goes lifestyle of today’s Key West.

The film introduces characters such as New Deal administrator Julius Stone, who leads the controversial effort to turn Key West into “The Bermuda of Florida.” We meet some of the country’s preeminent poets and writers, including Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway, who “discover” Key West in the 1920s and are outraged by the government’s transformation of “their” sleepy little island into a tourist town.

Key West: Bohemia in the Tropics features rare Hemingway home movies from the 1930s and includes interviews with literary stars such as Gore Vidal and Russell Banks, who were drawn to the island in the decades after World War II by its bohemian culture and reputation.

In a fast-paced half-hour, the film explores the real and manufactured elements of the Key West story, and shows how tourist boosters and bohemians, strange bedfellows on a tiny island, together created the Key West of today.