Gianni Minà
Gianni Minà (; Turin, 17 May 1938) is an Italian journalist, writer, magazine editor and television host. He has collaborated with both Italian and International newspapers and magazines; produced hundreds of reports for RAI ("Radiotelevisione Italiana"); conceived and hosted television programs, as well as produced successful documentary films on the lives of Che Guevara, Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, Rigoberta Menchú, Silvia Baraldini, Subcomandante Marcos and Diego Maradona. Minà is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the literary journal "Latinoamerica e tutti i sud del mondo" ("Latin America and All the Souths in the World") as well as the  editor of the book series "Continente desaparecido" ("The Disappeared Continent") published by Sperling & Kupfer, a group of publications focuses on the Latin American world and its authors. Minà himself has published many books on Latin America. In 2003 Minà was elected to the assembly of the Società Italiana Autori ed Editori (the Italian Authors and Publishers Association) and was a member of the committee that designs and produces "Vivaverdi", the journal of Italian authors. In 2007 Minà received the Kamera Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for his lifetime's work. Biography. Born in Turin, Minà began his career as  a journalist in 1959 with the sports newspaper "Tuttosport", of which he was later editor-in-chief (1996-1998). In 1960 he began working with RAI (the Italian state Broadcasting Corporation) as a sports correspondent for the Olympic Games in Rome. In 1965, after working with the sports magazine "Sprint", Minà made documentaries for a variety of RAI's television programs including Tv7, AZ, TG1 and TG2, Dribbling, Odeon and Gulliver. In the mid-1970s Minà was one of the creators of the TV show "L'altra domenica" ("The Other Sunday") together with Maurizio Barendson and Renzo Arbore. In 1976, after 17  years of freelancing, he was hired by Tg2, then headed by Andrea Barbato, and began reporting on boxing, an activity that piqued his interest in American show business, social conflicts, minority groups. Around that time he also began reporting from Latin America, an event that would play a big role in defining his future career. Overall Minà reported on eight world soccer championships and seven Olympic Games in addition to many world boxing championships, most notably those from the era of Muhammad Ali. After taking part in two series of Giovanni Minoli's TV show "Mixer", he debuted as an  author and host of "Blitz", an innovative show that ran on Sunday afternoons and which featured guests such as Federico Fellini, Eduardo De Filippo, Muhammad Ali, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Gabriel García Márquez, Enzo Ferrari, Nereo Rocco, Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Ronaldo, Carlos Monzon, Edwin Moses, Pietro Mennea and Muhammad Ali. Minà followed Ali throughout his long-standing career and produced a documentary film, "Cassius Clay, una storia Americana" (Cassius Clay: An American Story), about the boxer. In 1987 he interviewed Cuban President Fidel Castro for the first time. Their 16-hour meeting was later published as a book . The interview also served as the primary source for "Fidel Racconta il Che" (Fidel Talks About Che), a report in which the Cuban leader, for the first and only time, discusses the heroic deeds of Ernesto Che Guevara. In 1990, following the decline of communism, a second interview between Minà and Castro was held. The two interviews would later be brought together in the book "Fidel". Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Amado wrote the preface. In 1991 Minà produced "Alta Classe" (High Class), a TV series profiling artists as Ray Charles, Pino Daniele, Massimo Troisi, and Chico Buarque de Hollanda . He hosted "La Domenica Sportiva" (Sports Sunday) and created the in-depth investigative program "Zona Cesarini". He produced "Una storia del Jazz" ("A History of Jazz"), a four-episode, program on folk music from Central and South America, as well as a sociological and technical history of boxing in 14 episodes entitled "Facce piene di pugni" (Faces Full of Fists). In 1992 Minà produced a series of documentaries on Latin America: From 1996 to 1998 he produced the television program "Storie" (Stories), which featured such individuals as the Dalai Lama, Luis Sepúlveda, Martin Scorsese, Naomi Campbell, John F. Kennedy, and  Pietro Ingrao. Two books were later published based on this program. In 2001 Minà produced "Maradona: non sarò mai un uomo comune" (Maradona: I Will Never Be an Ordinary Man), a 70-minute confessional report with Diego Maradona at the end of the most painful year in the life of the former soccer player. In 2004 Minà embarked on an eleven-year-long project based on the diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara and his friend, Alberto Granado, when they crossed Latin America by motorcycle in 1952. Guevara and Granado's journey began in Argentina and continued on through southern Chile , the Atacama Desert, the mines in Chuquicamata, the Peruvian Amazonia, Colombia and Venezuela. After collaborating on the film based on this adventure story (The Motorcycle Diaries), directed by Walter Salles and produced by Robert Redford and Michael Nozik), Minà produced the film "In viaggio con il Che" (Travels with Che) about the life of 80-year-old Alberto Granado. The movie was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlinale, and the Film Festivals in Annecy, Morelia (Mexico), Valladolid, and Belgrade. It won as best documentary in the Montréal Film Festival and was awarded the "Nastro d'Argento" (the Silver Filmstrip ), the critics' prize, in Italy. Minà has been a long-standing collaborator with several Italian newspapers, including "La Repubblica", "L'Unità", "Corriere della Sera" and "Il Manifesto". He has also authored many books, including "Continente desaparecido" (The Disappeared Continent), consisted of a series of interviews with Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Amado, Eduardo Galeano, Rigoberta Menchú, mons. Samuel Ruiz, Frei Botto, Pombo and Urbano, friends of the late Che Guevara from Bolivia. This book later became the title of a series of non-fictional accounts on Latin America published by Sperling & Kupfer. In 2003 Minà wrote "Un mondo migliore è possibile" (A  Better World Is Possible), an account of the ideas from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that was subsequently translated into Spanish, Portuguese and French. In 2005 he published "Il continente desaparecido è ricomparso" (The Disappeared Continent Has Reappeared), highlighting the new international political landscape as interpreted by Eduardo Galeano, Fernando Solanas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Brazilian singer-songwriter and Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, as well as Arundhati Roy, Tarik Ali, Luis Sepúlveda, Paco Taibo II and theologians Leonardo Boff and François Houtart. His latest written work, published by Sperling & Kupfer, is "Politicamente scorretto, Riflessioni di un  giornalista fuori dal coro" ("Politically Incorrect: Reflections of a Dissonant Journalist"). It is a collection of articles previously published in "La Repubblica", "L'Unità", "Il Manifesto" and "Latinoamerica", and represents an authentic source of alternative information on a wide range of contemporary events and controversies. Minà is currently publisher and editor-in-chief of the literary journal "Latinoamerica e tutti i sud del mondo" (Latin America and All the Souths of the World), a geopolitical quarterly that features the writings of the most prestigious intellectuals from the American continent. In 2007, together with GME Productions S.r.l., Rai Trade and "La Gazzetta  dello Sport", Minà published "Maradona: Non sarò mai un uomo comune" ("Maradona: I Will Never Be an Ordinary Man"). This ten-DVD set, which tells the story of the legendary Argentinean soccer player, sold a record 1,200,000 copies, thereby becoming one of the most successful publication ventures in the last ten years. In 2008 "Le stagioni di Blitz" ("The Blitz Seasons") was broadcast on Rai 3. This program, in ten episodes, takes a second look at Minà's program, "Blitz", which was originally broadcast during the 1983–1985 television season. Minà has filmed the documentary "Cuba in the epoch of Obama