This Dust of Words

Running time: 60 mins

A brilliant Stanford student descends into a life on the street.

Elizabeth Wiltsee?s intellect and talent showed promise for a brilliant writing career. In writer-director Bill Rose?s (The Loss of Nameless Things) moving homage, Wiltsee?s life and her work are given the tribute they deserve.

Elizabeth was a prolific writer, but she was unable to get her works published. She eventually landed homeless in Watsonville, sleeping on the steps of St. Patrick?s Church, apparently mute. It was at St. Patrick?s that she became part of a community that knew and cared for her.

One day she disappeared. What transpired between her childhood and her final days is told through interviews with her mentor at Stanford, family, friends, parishioners, photographs and Elizabeth?s letters and writings. A compelling and compassionate film, This Dust of Words is an elegy for a fiercely independent spirit, and a life lived deeply and differently, beautiful and haunting, right to the end.

Ellis Levinson

Preceded by; China: A Will to Rise; A testimony to the spirit of the people and to the culture of China seen through the eyes of sixteen young photographers.