Building Hope

Lone Star States
D: Turk Pipkin

“We can’t engage with every community in need, but we can engage with this one,” Christy Pipkin says in this documentary feature about building a high school in poverty-stricken rural Kenya. Made under the auspices of the Nobelity Project, the Austin-based nonprofit led by Pipkin with filmmaker and husband Turk Pipkin, Building Hope is a straightforward account of how something was made, quite literally, from nothing. Pipkin’s respect for the Kenyans he films is unadorned and his easygoing narration draws you in without chest-beating. But that doesn’t mean the film is passionless. When Pipkin plainly states that $11 billion would educate every child in the world through grade eight – the same amount the U.S. military spends in one week – it’s not to instill anger, but rather to give an encouraging push to realize that little steps can make a big difference.

Thursday, March 17, 6pm, Arbor

This article appears in March 18 • 2011.

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