Maine-Made Documentary Explores Sustainability
PRESS RELEASE
BAR HARBOR—The Maine-made, award-winning documentary, Saving Walden’s World, will screen at College of the Atlantic on Wednesday, April 23 at 6 p.m., followed by a Q&A with director Jim Merkel. The event takes place at the Center for Human Ecology, Rm. 202, and is free and open to the public.
Screening during Earth Week, Saving Walden’s World is an 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. When a young arms dealer, Merkel, 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. The revealing film follows Merkel as he raises Walden, a budding scientist, in an off-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. The film premises that gender-equal societies leave a smaller ecological footprint and enhance life-quality.
Saving Walden's World is about solutions. However, “Our world is facing an incredibly unhinged force that is trying to quelch our humanity while giving a green light to our most destructive impulses. This is no time to take our eyes off the prize,” Merkel says, “which is co-creating a world that works for all.”
The film is the recipient of 13 international film festival awards.
Event sponsors include: Alliance for Sears Island, College of the Atlantic, CREATS International, Girls with Books, Kerala Forum on United Nations Academic Impact, Mabel Wadsworth Center, Maine Film Association, Maine Media, Midcoast Earth Protectors, Peace and Justice Group of Waldo County, Sierra Club of Maine, The Friends of Harriet Hartley, Upstream Watch, WERU, and World View Productions.
An additional screening of Saving Walden’s World will take place at the Maine Film Center in Waterville on April 22 at 6:30 p.m.