Gianni Minà

Biography

Born in Turin, Minà began his career as a journalist in 1959 with the sport newspaper Tuttosport, of which he was later editor-in-chief (1996- 1998). In 1960 he began working with the RAI (the Italian state Broadcasting Corporation) as a sports collaborator for the Olympic Games in Rome. In 1965, after working with the sports magazine Sprint, edited by Maurizio Barendson, Minà wrote reports and made documentaries for a variety of television programs including Tv7, AZ, the Special Services of TG, Dribbling, Odeon and Gulliver.

He 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. He produced Una storia del Jazz ("A History of Jazz") in four episodes, programs 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).

Minà was one of the founders of L'altra domenica ("The Other Sunday") together with Maurizio Barendson and Renzo Arbore. In 1976, after 17 years of temporary and unstable work, he was hired by Tg2, then headed by Andrea Barbato, and began reporting on boxing, the world of American show business, and the social conflicts of minority groups. Around that time he also began reporting from Latin America, an aspect that has defined his entire career.

In 1981 President Sandro Pertini awarded Minà the Saint Vincent Prize as best television journalist of the year. At the same time, after taking part in two series of Giovanni Minoli's Mixer, he debuted as an author and host of Blitz, an innovative program of the R.A.I. 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, and Enzo Ferrari.

In 1987 he interviewed Cuban President Fidel Castro for the first time. This 16-hour encounter was part of a documentary that later went on to become a classic. The documentary was later published as a book around the world. The historic 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 were brought together in the book Fidel. Gabriel García Márquez wrote the prologue for the first interview while Brazilian writer, Jorge Amado, wrote the prologue for the second interview.

In 1991 Minà produced Alta Classe (High Class), a televised series featuring the profiles of such great 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.

Among his most successful documentaries are those related to sports, including features on Nereo Rocco, Diego Maradona and Michel Platini, Ronaldo, Carlos Monzon, Edwin Moses, Pietro Mennea and Cassius Clay / Muhammad Ali. Minà followed Ali throughout his long-standing career and dedicated the film Cassius Clay, una storia Americana (Cassius Clay: An American Story) to the boxer.

In 1992 Minà began a series of works on Latin America:

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 initiated a project which he then followed for the next eleven years. It was based on the youth 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, I diari della motocicletta (The Motorcycle Diaries), directed by Walter Salles and produced by Robert Redford and Michael Nozik, Minà made the movie In viaggio con il Che (Travels with Che) which retraced the legendary adventure of 80-year-old Alberto Granado. The movie was featured 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: La Repubblica, L'Unità, Corriere della Sera and Il Manifesto. 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 Kennedy, and Pietro Ingrao. Two books were later published based on this program.

One of his written works, 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, a long journey in a rebellious and controversial country, told through the voices of youths. One thousand kilometres from Havana to Santiago de Cuba and back, with the hopes, the disillusions and the dreams of the students in visit at the Che Guevara's mausoleum in Santa Clara or students of the Bayamo Art School, or the young people of the Brigade which watches the borders of the Guantanamo USA Naval Base, many of which will become Cuba's future doctors or filmmakers.

A country narrated from within, with the songs of its songwriters and singers, in the age in which a change in the policy of the U.S. and of the Revolution itself is expected, after 50 years of misunderstandings. The documentary has been introduced in the Venice Film Festival.

Awards

Works