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It's been a year now since his documentary "This Dust of Words" premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, but Bill Rose is still riding a wave of screenings.

He was just in New Mexico, where his movie was shown at the Santa Fe Film Center. Then the movie was in Greece for the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and on to the Women's Film Festival in Vermont (a particular honor, considering the movie was made by a man). Next month, it comes home for a Stanford Film Society screening on April 5.

"Everywhere it's shown, people asked for more screenings," Rose says in an interview at his Palo Alto home, shaking his head and smiling.

The filmmaker is also clearly still captivated by his subject, Elizabeth Wiltsee. "I'm really into lives that end up in unexpected destinations," he says.

Wiltsee's life epitomizes that concept. A brilliant Stanford University student born in 1949, she was remarkable with language -- she taught herself to read Mandarin and ancient Greek -- and was determined to make her own way in the world.

"Her keenness of word and spirit, her skepticism, her luminous smile -- you had to be grateful for such a student, even among a wonderful class at the climax of the 1960s," her former English professor John Felstiner wrote in a memoir that he frequently quotes in Rose's film.

After college, according to the film, Wiltsee followed different paths: traveling in Europe, working in publishing and libraries, moving between the West and East coasts, and writing plays. But mental illness set in -- her brother, Chris, says she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia -- and she ended up homeless and sleeping on the steps of a church in Watsonville, Calif.

Parishioners cared for Wiltsee, and her family sent money, but she refused treatment. She spent hours reading in the city library and began attending Mass. By 1999 she seemed calmer. That July she left town, saying she was "going home." The following January, her body was found near San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, 45 miles away.

"This Dust of Words" opens with shots of the reservoir, and yet it's not a wholly sad film. The water ripples and breezes blow through the grass, and the reservoir feels like a place where a questing soul who loved the outdoors might at last find peace.

Rose agrees that there's something "open-hearted" about his film. "There's a mysteriousness and wonder that permeates her life story," he says. "The people along the way helped her get where she always knew she would end up."

Last year, film critic Susan Tavernetti, a longtime Weekly reviewer, wrote in her coverage of Cinequest for FilmFestivals.com that she found "lyrical rhythms and contemplative visuals" in "This Dust of Words."

"Instead of delving into the darkness of shattered dreams, Rose finds the solace and beauty of his subjects' unconventional lives," she wrote.

Rose's previous film, "The Loss of Nameless Things," centered on Oakley Hall III, a playwright who suffered head injuries in a mysterious fall from a bridge. Twenty-five years later, he worked with a theater company to put on the play he'd been writing the night of his fall.

Rose, a Gunn High School graduate with a background in corporate film, first became interested in Wiltsee's story in 2001, when he read Felstiner's memoir in Stanford Magazine. Like Wiltsee's senior thesis on Beckett, the memoir was called "this dust of words."

The poignant piece struck a chord with Rose, who had grown up in the same era. He became even more taken with the story when Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter Peggy Townsend wrote a 2002 article about Wiltsee and her life in Watsonville, headlined "A beautiful mind."

For his film, Rose interviewed Felstiner, Chris Wiltsee and many of the parishioners Townsend had spoken to. Church member Toni Breese is shown speaking in a soft voice about befriending Wiltsee, giving her fruit and yogurt and trying to help her, even when Wiltsee would fly into rages or pretend to be mute. Breese also gave her photos of people in town with notes so that Wiltsee would know who they were.

One of those people was Walter Washington, who gave Wiltsee food at the church. In the film, he recalls quoting the first lines of an Emily Dickinson poem. Wiltsee responded with the remaining lines, then told him she was a Stanford graduate in English, something no one at the church had known.

After Wiltsee died, the parishioners contacted her family and held a memorial service. Chris Wiltsee said in the film that he was "shocked" that so many people had known his sister. Although investigators could not determine a cause of death, Wiltsee said he believes that Elizabeth chose to walk off into the wilderness, stop eating and make "peace with a higher being."

Rose also tells Wiltsee's story through old photos, home movies and a film that she acted in as a college student. Actress Allison Jean White recreates Wiltsee's voice, reading from her letters and plays. The documents came from a box that Wiltsee left behind in a storage unit; her family lent them to Rose.

These days, while Rose is enjoying the film-festival circuit, he'd like "This Dust of Words" to head to other educational arenas, such as school or parish screenings. "The Loss of Nameless Things" was picked up by PBS, and he'd be thrilled to have that happen to "Dust" as well, but says that there's an "absolute glut of documentaries out there" these days.

For now, Rose has a third film on the horizon about another intriguing person. He's purposely inscrutable about the topic. After all, artists often keep their ideas close to the vest, but Rose just seems to like a mystery.

He recalls one mysterious thing that didn't make it into his film about Elizabeth Wiltsee: In her notebooks, he found a Chinese character she wrote over and over. It puzzled him, so he took it to several scholars. He got a number of answers about what the character could mean, more tantalizing than conclusive: a body of water, heaven, a fairytale.

If Rose could somehow speak to Wiltsee today and ask her anything, would he? He thinks about this question for a long time, then finally concludes that he wouldn't. The only thing he might want to know, he says, is if she's comfortable with the way he depicted her.

"Ultimately, Elizabeth is unknowable," he says. "There are aspects of her life that are impenetrable."

What: A screening of "This Dust of Words" by Palo Alto filmmaker Bill Rose, presented by the Stanford Film Society. Rose and Stanford professor John Felstiner are scheduled to attend.

Where: Roble Hall Theater, Stanford University

When: 7 p.m. Sunday, April 5

Cost: Free

Info: For more about the film, go to www.thisdustofwords.com. For more on the Stanford screening, e-mail kmahuron@stanford.edu.