But Beautiful

What does a good life, a successful life, look like? And how do we tell the story of such a life? Notions of beauty and the beautiful (always preceded by a “but”) are at the heart of Erwin Wagenhofer’s new film and book. Both tell of people who have chosen a path towards a truly future-enabled world.
We can’t go on like this … and yet on and on we go. Or do we? People are now looking for new approaches and a different way of being – which, like the world itself, can be different, but beautiful. This book is a companion volume to the film, written by Erwin Wagenhofer and Sabine Kriechbaum.
We meet the “Light-bringers” of India – women who cannot read or write but who train in solar engineering at Barefoot College and take their skills and knowledge back to their rural communities, providing light and improving the quality of life there. We meet the Grafs, who took on land in La Palma desolated by intensive farming and in just ten years transformed it into a teeming paradise. And Erwin Thoma, who builds wood houses, reliant on neither heating nor cooling to create the healthiest environment. We meet musicians from the US, Columbia and Austria who convey beauty in their own way. We meet the Dalai Lama and his sister, Jetsun Pema …
But Beautiful explores age-old but ever-important qualities like altruism, attentiveness and empathy. It reveals that in a world of finite resources the one thing that needs to grow is the quality of our relationships.