About
about my company
Founded in Chicago in 2006, Modio Media Productions, Inc. is an award-winning video and television production company specializing in non-fiction content. Managing partners Gia Marie Amella, writer, producer, director, and Beppe Mangione, sound recordist, cameraman and editor, have over four decades of combined experience in the U.S. and Europe. Their work has aired on PBS, CNN International, CNBC, National Geographic International, HISTORY Channel, A&E Networks, CBC, The Weather Channel, Discovery, among others. Gia and Beppe use their exceptional storytelling skills to create branded content across business sectors in English and Italian--from hospitality, food, wine and fashion, to manufacturing, technology and design.
Modio Media filmed, field produced and directed multiple segments for HISTORY's Project Impossible (2017), a one-hour series showecasing extraordinary feats of engineering across the globe, from Venice’s controversial flood barrier system, MOSE, to the largest off-shore wind farm ever built in the North Sea. That same year, Gia served as writer and consulting producer on the highly anticipated documentary feature, The Arab Americans (2017), garnering nearly one million viewers on PBS stations nationwide.
Modio Media's original productions are: 30.000 Miles to the Finish (2019) about the only Italian to compete in the Golden Globe Race 2018, one of the most extreme races of modern day sailing, named Best Documentary at the 2021 Caorle Independent Film Festival; Terror in Tuscany: World War II Atrocities (2011) for CNN International’s long-running doc stand, World’s Untold Stories, an expose of civilian massacres in Italy and survivors' quest for justice, winner of the 2012 Peter Lisagor Award for Outstanding Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists Chicago chapter; and the Midwest Emmy-nominated And They Came To Chicago: The Italian American Legacy (2006) narrated by Tony Award-winning actor Joe Mantegna for WTTW-Chicago (PBS).
more about gia
Gia got her first taste of television through two consecutive internships in news and programming at KGO-TV in San Francisco. After graduate school, she held various administrative and production roles with increasing responsibility, in time becoming a full-fledged writer, producer, director on factual shows. The year prior to launching her company, Gia served a stint as interim supervising producer on the HGTV series New Spaces, sparking her keen interest in home rehab and design.
A 1998-99 Fulbright Fellow to Palermo, Italy, Gia holds an M.A. in Radio-Television (1993) from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in Italian Literature (1988) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Gia's been recognized by the National Immigration Council, the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, Women's Division, and the State of Illinois for contributions to her field. She's also the recipient of grants from the National Italian American Foundation, the Illinois and the California State Humanities Councils, and numerous private foundations.
Over the years, Gia has brought her professional experience into the classroom. Between 1994-97, Gia taught an intensive summer course on the history of the documentary form at her alma mater, San Francisco State University. She served as an instructor and mentor in the Bay Area Video Coalition's Above the Line Program, a free hands-on training course giving women and people of color better access to media career opportunities. She continues to lecture widely on at schools, universities, cultural associations and conferences on her company's work.
