Gianni Minà (; 17 May 1938 – 27 March 2023) was an Italian journalist, writer, magazine editor, and television host. He 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 was 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 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, Betty Faria, 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).