Exactly a hundred years ago the missionary arrived in Tierra del Fuego, and started to explore a territory considered the end of the known inhabited world. On this anniversary, Giovanni De Agostini – who with great enthusiasm heard from his grand uncle accounts of his travels and the strange animals he encountered – re-traced the most important steps of his journeys.
In this centenary year 2010, the DVD of the documentary “The ends of the world” is being sent to all Salesian houses in the world: a testament to the courage and the skill of a man who setting out from Turin to follow Don Bosco’s dream, further than the first destinations in Argentina, became a map-maker, still appreciated today (and in many cases the only one) of a land constantly covered by ice. He it was who discovered that what until then had been considered a large lake was in fact a small bay of the sea: for this reason the fiord today bears the name De Agostini.
He came from a family well known for its dedication to geography. Fr Alberto Maria gave his brother Giovanni the task of being responsible for the production of books and atlases which were appreciated not only in Italy; wearing his inseparable cassock he was a navigator of the Atlantic, a walker across the vast plains of Tierra del Fuego, a climber – with memories if his beloved Alps, left behind in his native Pollone (in the province of Biella) – of numerous unconquered peaks of South America. He twice tried and failed to reach the summit of Sarmiento, and succeeded only at the third attempt His advice was sought by the professionals: Clemente Gueret and Carlo Mauri who joined him in the successful attempt in 1955. The surrounding natural park there also bears the name of the Salesian.
The Missioni Don Bosco team, with the director Davide Demichelis and the anthropologist Elisabetta Gatto, paid a visit to Rio Grande, Ushuaia, Punta Arenas, noting, with the grand-nephew Giovanni De Agostini the radical transformation of the territory compared with the eyewitness accounts of Fr Alberto Maria. The ancient wild forest reserve inhabited by a native population has become a top level tourist attraction and a centre of industrial and residential development for both Argentina and Chile. The photographs and films made by Fr De Agostini are a unique historical record of the of the presence of the natives of Tierra del Fuego in addition to that of nature uncontaminated.
The documentary was presented in Turin on 15 December, at the Agnelli theatre: a well-deserved mark of respect for a Salesian in danger of being forgotten by most people There were also several appreciative previews: at the “International Festival of Mountain Films” in Autrans, Francia, then, going beyond the shores of Europe, it was chosen for the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival in Nepal between 9 and 13 December, while in the first months of the new year a public showing is planned in Chile, as part of the commmoration of Fr De Agostini. In spring it will be shown at the Piemonte Movie and in July at the Cervino Cinemountain Festival.
Published 29/12/2010
