Filmmaker Joni Steele Kimberlin traveled from Greenwich to the Himalayas in India with her production assistant daughter, Genevieve, left, to interview Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo, who is featured in Kimberlin s feature film, "Get Real! Wise Women Speak." (Contributed photo)

It was when documentarian Joni Steele Kimberlin turned 50 last year, a baby boomer with three children of her own, that she determined to document what she saw as underplayed and unrealized in our society," the wisdom of women of all ages, especially of women over 50."

"What is needed on this planet is for older women to step up to the plate," said Kimberlin, who lives in Belle Haven but was vacationing with her family in Nantucket.

To promote the wisdom she finds in older women, Kimberlin has undertaken an ambitious feature-length film profiling an extraordinary cast of women, from Jane Fonda to the "highest ranking" Buddhist nun, from Gov. M. Jodi Rell to oceanographer Sylvia Earle, from Nobel laureates to poets to authors.

Kimberlin has interviewed 23 "wise women" for the film, but not all will make the cut. She has traveled as far as the Himalayas to talk to a Buddhist nun, taking with her Genevieve Kimberlin, her production assistant daughter and Boston College student, along with a cameraman hired in New Delhi to capture the nun's visual witness.

The film was first titled, "Women Who Speak" but with Kimberlin's passion to better communicate the value of these older women's wisdom, she tacked onto the front of it, "Get Real," for the reasons she explained.

"The percentage of these women is growing," she said, referring to a recent count of 60 million American women over the age of 50. Women of experience, she said, need to get real, "to look in the mirror and be proud of this wisdom and experience you have and use it.

"Don't waste it," she said. "You have so much to offer to the world and the community.

"This is the time women can cultivate their true Self," she said, with a capital S, "rather than what society thinks they should be. "If you don't take time to make that transition, it will be more bumpy in your third stage of life."

She found many of her interviewees practice meditation and take yoga as she does, that they are finding the time to be spiritual, to read philosophy and poetry. "Get Real" meant "to become who you are, and that's a joy," she said.

"We're not invisible," she said. "Jump in, the water's fine." Her film's message that she hoped one day would be shared together by young and older women - she has two daughters - was that when young women exit that "babe" stage she sees as being over-sexualized by the media, that they won't "fall off the face of the earth.

"There's a whole beautiful landscape of life, it has stages and they're all worthwhile," she said.

She called her trip to the Himalayas in search of the Buddhist nun, "a trip of a lifetime." Traveling first to Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives, she traveled farther to the village of the Tibetan nun where she became stranded with no regular plane service.

"Most nuns leaving Tibet for their freedom have left their families behind," she said. Buddhist nuns, she noted, "haven't had a voice," and nun Tenzin Palmo was working toward educating others "to grow in spiritual rank."

For her first documentary, Kimberlin partnered with Third Wave, a Greenwich women's film production company, to profile another entrepreneuring woman, Elizabeth Feake, whose life is part of Greenwich history. The film, "The Winthrop Woman," first showed on Connecticut Public Television and continues to show up on PBS stations around the country. It is regularly shown on Channel 79 in Greenwich. The film was based on Greenwich author Anya Seton's book of the same name.

She chose to call her current production company, Cowgirl Films, to depict an "independent and spunky spirit.

"We're suburban cowgirls," she said.

To anchor her "Get Real - Wise Women Speak" film, and to act as the thread for a disparate collection of women, she chose a Stamford dance teacher in her 70s, Roberta Pollard, widowed but with a new partner she found on Yahoo personals. "She's full of vigor and wit," said Kimberlin. "She's someone we can relate to, she's an everywoman."

"I've always been a writer," said Kimberlin, who began her professional life as a newspaper writer for a weekly in Indianapolis. After moving to New York and beginning her family while working for Fairchild Publications, she decided to study film production at New York University. Her first film on performance art "was never broadcast," she said.

She liked the documentary's collaborative process "because it's challenging and interesting," she said. She likened the process to "building a house."

"You get an idea and then do the research, set up a schedule for shoots, hire a crew, work with the editor, choose the graphics and create the look of the whole film," she said. Her film will be "fast-moving and colorful" to attract both the teenager and "those over 35," she said.

Completion date, she hopes, will be mid-November.

She plans to "4-wall" the film, or get it broadcast in festivals to generate interest. She isn't interested in its status as an independent film - she wants the widest possible distribution.

She also wants her film to be shown in educational outlets, "low cost or free-of-charge schools and senior centers." She wants "to inspire as many people as possible how the human spirit manifests itself more gloriously as you age."