BY TEQUILA MINSKY | “This isn’t Croatia,” Ilsa Gilbert said, jokingly. The evening before, the film “Winter at Westbeth,” in which she features prominently, screened in Great Neck, Long Island, but it has also done so in Croatia.
The documentary, by Australian filmmaker Rohan Spong, mainly focuses on three residents of Westbeth, the renowned artists housing complex, at Westbeth and Bethune Sts. The other two subjects are experimental filmmaker Edith Stephen and dancer Dudley Williams. Williams died before the film debuted last November at the DOC NYC festival.
As well as Croatia, Gilbert ticked off its other screenings, including Hawaii, Australia and “all around New Zealand.”
She and composer Mimi Stern-Wolfe did a post-screening event in Massachusetts for the film earlier this year.
Thursday, the two went to Great Neck, where the film showed as part of Bow Tie Cinemas’ “Gold Coast Series.” They fielded rapid-fire questions — “There were a lot!” Gilbert noted — afterward.
Questions included: “How old is the youngest person at Westbeth?”
“We have babies,” Gilbert chuckled.
And the one she liked the most: “Do you have a lot of parties?”
The answer: Yes!
Gilbert has lived at Westbeth for 15 years and recently celebrated her 84th birthday. Known as “The Poet of Bleecker Street,” she is the founder and director of the PEN Women’s Literary Workshop. Her poetry has formed librettos for numerous operas and song cycles, notably performed by Stern-Wolfe. Stern-Wolfe is featured in Spong’s previous documentary, “All The Way Through Evening.”
