Get Tickets to Screenings Here!

October 18, 6:45 PM Iris Global Health Film Festival, Boulder Colorado
November 23, 6 PM, Mettabee Farm, 551 Harlemville Rd, Hillsdale, NY
October 14, 9 AM, 10 AM, Western Colorado University, Gunnison, Co.

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Jim’s Story:

When a young arms dealer discovers his work is harming families in less affluent societies, he has an ethical crisis and begins a decades-long journey to redeem himself and make the world a better place. SAVING WALDEN’S WORLD is a revealing new film following Jim Merkel as he raises Walden, a budding scientist, in an off-the-grid homestead and wonders: could the very people his past-life’s work targeted, hold the keys to a sustainable planet?

A journey ensues, meeting powerful women who reshape society to work for all. Far from affluent utopias, Kerala, Cuba and Slovenia offer women free college, access to contraception, maternity leave, childcare, dentistry and healthcare. Services unimaginable in much of Jim’s blue-collar America.

As earth temperatures soar, the stakes couldn’t get higher.

Powerful women reduce infant mortality, poverty and family size while increasing longevity.

Gender Equality & Sustainability

Immerse yourself in this intimate father-son exploration of a global shift, where personal and collective decisions about procreation and consumption ripple through generations, resulting in fewer yet healthier children.

Our story uncovers how:

Land reform, literacy and universal higher education dramatically increase well-being.

Family planning, child care and public health programs yielded results similar to advanced European social democracies in "poor" societies.

Many of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals were achieved by empowered women.

Some were not pleased.

Declassified documents reveal covert plots to undo these efforts.

  • Societies that enacted agrarian reforms faced military intervention — to control land and labor.
  • Programs aimed to lower poverty and expand education were targeted as “socialist.”
  • Jim became entangled in this “Secret Government” exposed in a 1987 Bill Moyers documentary.

Imagine…

the world’s wealthy consume less,

the poor exit poverty,

fewer — yet healthier children are born,

easing extinctions, hunger and climate change.

A self-reinforcing cycle where all win.

A Spiritual Emergency

About the director & the film

The 1987 Iran Contra hearings exposed how the KL-43 that I help design was used by Ollie North to illegally arm dictators favorable to US business interests. Two years later, I watched T.V. coverage of the EXXON Valdez oil spill in a bar-room in Stockhlom while marketing the KL-43. Something snapped.

I began questioning everything.

Along the way I wrote “Radical Simplicity” as a way to learn and share ways of living in harmony with this miraculous planet.

  • Can my daily life ease gender violence, inequality, poverty, climate change, white supremacy… the 6th extinction?
  • Can I leave a healing planet and society for the world’s children?
 

Blog

2 Great Things to do this Summer. Attend MOFF! Read this Film Review

This summer Jim Merkel will be taking his documentary film “Saving Walden’s World” to a series of screenings by sailboat along Maine’s magnificent coastline, arriving without fossil fuels when possible. First stop, Portland ME at Space for the Maine Outdoor Film Festival or MOFF. We will highlight one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals at each screening, arriving at the UN in NYC for the Summit of the Future meeting September 22-23.

SAILING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

In July and August, Jim Merkel will be taking “Saving Walden’s World” to a series of screenings by sailboat, SAILING FOR SUSTAINABILITY,  with the goal of arriving without fossil fuels to as many of our Maine events as possible.

NEXT STOP FOR SAVING WALDEN’S WORLD – FREDERICTON, NB

The University of New Brunswick is excited to host Saving Walden’s World, a film that has its roots in Belfast, Maine with author and filmmaker, Jim Merkel on May 29, at 6:15 p.m. at Tilley Hall, Room 102.

Latest News

Saving Walden’s World’ looks at 3 societies believed sustainable and fair

Saving Walden’s World comes to Portland Maine MOFF

Saving Walden's World filmmaker comes to Colonial Theatre

Colonial Theater to host evening with ‘Saving Walden’s World’ filmmaker

Come learn how and why the documentary “Saving Walden’s World” was created, taking Merkel around the world for research, filming, and screenings of this uniquely personal film on women’s empowerment, culture, and steps that are being taken globally to develop sustainable living and food solutions.

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Jim Merkel and
Saving Walden's World