Che Guevara paid tribute in Europa League

Che Guevara remembered in Cyprus

Next October 9 marks the 55th anniversary of the passing of South American guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara. Omonia Nicosia fans have not forgotten him and displayed a banner in his honor at the Europa League match played by the Cypriot green-and-whites at home against Manchester United.

Mediaset’s thematic channels Focus and Iris are launching a three-day historical-cinematic event named after the Comandante: “Ernesto Che Guevara – History of a Revolutionary” will be aired on Saturday, Oct. 8, Sunday, Oct. 9 and Monday, Oct. 10, starting at 9:15 p.m., on the networks directed by Marco Costa.

The remembrance of Guevara – revolutionary, guerrilla fighter, writer, politician, doctor; a figure who aroused enormous passions, for and against; after his death elected an icon of leftist revolutionary movements; idolized by Cubans and, worldwide, by all those who recognized themselves in his ideals – is entrusted to three documentaries on Focus and films dedicated to him by Steven Soderbergh on Iris.

Focus opens the show, Oct. 8, at 9:15 p.m., with the unreleased doc Che Guevara: History and Legend followed, at 10:15 p.m., by Cuba: History of a Revolution. Closing, finally, at 11:15 p.m., with the unreleased doc Che Guevara – The Birth of an Icon.

The first title (signed art, Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne, like the last one) is strictly biographical and focused on Che’s revolutionary and political activities; the second broadens the horizon to the revolutionary activities planned and financed by Cuba, between the 1960s and 1980s, with the leading role played by Guevara; the third has a more anthropological character and, with the help of a series of experts, identifies moments, gestures, phrases and images in which Che was a protagonist and which later became the pillars of his own myth.

The retrospective then continues on Iris, on Oct. 9 and 10, in prime time, with the films directed by Soderbergh Che – The Argentine and Che – Guerrilla, two parts that, united in a single film, were presented in competition at Cannes in 2008 and where the protagonist Benicio del Toro won the Palme d’Or for best male performance.