The film:

Tierra del Fuego, 1920s. These are images of daily life in the Ona community (Selk’nam), an indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego, today extinct and at the time of the film already decimated by the violence of conquerors and disease. There is a strong contrast with the second part showing the Native Americans in the Salesian missions, celebrating their ‘civilisation’: women at spinning wheels, with their heads covered with handkerchiefs and a sad look in their eyes; men engaged in deforestation or in managing immense flocks of sheep.
The films by De Agostini, a charismatic missionary but also an explorer, naturalist and photographer, have been re-issued many times. The print conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema could be a fragment of Terra del Fuoco, listed in the 1928-29 bulletin of the Films Missioni Don Bosco. 

The digital process:

Digitally restored in 4K in 2019 by Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino and CIAN at CIAN laboratory from a nitrate positive preserved by Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino. A storage dupe negative was made at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

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