Mario Fantin was born in Bologna in 1921. After fighting in the Second World War, with an accountant's diploma in his pocket he became an "explorer with a movie camera". Starting from the Alps, he joined the most adventurous expeditions to the four corners of the globe. He presented 22 films at the Trento Film Festival, starting with ABECEDARIO DI PETRA in the first edition in 1952. Until he decided that the discovery of the world could also take place within the walls of his apartment in Bologna, where in 1967 he founded the CISDAE (Italian Center for the Study and Documentation of Extra-European Mountaineering) and began to assemble the collection now preserved at the National Museum of the Mountains in Turin. He took his own life in 1980, almost forgotten.