Saving Walden’s World

country, year

USA, 2020

genre

documentary

running time

89’

directed by

Jim Merkel

languages

English 

subtitles 

Slovene subtitles

about the film

When a young arms dealer discovers that his work is harming families in less affluent societies, he faces a crisis of his personal values. He embarks on a decades-long journey to make the world a better place. Saving Walden’s World is a film that follows Jim Merkel as he raises Walden, an budding scientist, on an off-the-grid homestead, and wonders: could the very people his work was directed against in a previous life hold the key to a sustainable planet? What follows is a journey to meet powerful women who want to transform society so that it works for everyone. Kerala, Cuba and Slovenia are far from rich utopias, but they offer women free education, access to contraception, maternity leave, childcare, dental and medical care – services that most of the American working class can’t even imagine. And with the Earth’s temperatures rising, the world is facing an even greater challenge.

trailer

what was said about the film

The 1987 Iran Contra hearings exposed how the KL-43 I’d help design was used by Ollie North to illegally arm dictators favorable to US business interests. In 1989 T.V. coverage of EXXON Valdez oil spill flooded a bar-room screen in Stockhlom while marketing the KL-43. 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?

director Jim Merkel on the film’s website

about the author

Jim Merkel, Director, Producer is an author and educator that moved from top-secret military engineering to pioneering in sustainability. His book, “Radical Simplicity” has been used as text in hundreds of university classes. Jim authored a chapter in “Bending the Arc,” by SUNY PRESS which highlighted this film’s larger goals. A 2005 Jan Cannon Film, “radically simple” track Jim’s work as Dartmouth College’s Sustainability Coordinator. In 1994 Merkel received an Earthwatch Gaia Fellowship to research efficient resource use in Kerala, India, and visited communities in the Himalayas. The following year he founded the Global Living Project (GLP) in British Columbia where teams of researchers monitored ecological footprints. He and his partner Susan Cutting and their child Walden grow much of their food and live off-the-grid in a home they built from oaks and pines from their land in Belfast, Maine.

festivals and awards

  • Five continents international film festival, 2024: Best documentary award
  • Crown Wood International Film Festival 2024: Best documentary award
  • Kookai International Film Festival 2024: Best film
  • Vacationland film festival: Spirit of action award 2024
  • Puerto Aventuras International Film Festival 2024: audience choice
  • Maine Outdoor Film Feestival 2024
  • Iris Global Health Film Festival 2024
  • Babul eco film festival 2024
  • Maumee Film Festival 2024
  • Festival de Cine Antigua 2024
  • Love & Hope International film festival 2024
  • Utopia film festival 2024

filmography 

Saving Walden’s World is Jim Merkel’s first feature film.