Lamarr pic among 10 at Jewish film festival

Who’d have thought famed Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr (left) was an ingenious inventor and integral to the World War II war effort? But in the movie Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (Alexandra Dean), a documentary screening next week at the Windsor Jewish Film Festival, Lamarr is portrayed not only for her wild Hollywood exploits but as inventor of wireless technology that helped guide wartime torpedoes. The movie screens Tuesday at 2 pm…... It’s the 16th year for the fest, which will screen 10 films between Monday and Thursday, all at its usual locale, Devonshire Mall’s Cineplex theatres…... The opening night screening Monday at 7.30 pm is An Act of Defiance (Jean van de Velde), an historical drama about South African’s Apartheid regime, focusing on activists Nelson Mandela and his “inner circle of Black and Jewish supporters” who face a possible death sentence for conspiracy. In other films, The Last Suit (Pablo Solarz) is a whimsical yet serious story about an aged Jewish tailor, a Holocaust survivor, who embarks on a journey across Europe in search of an old friend who, many years earlier, saved him from death…... There are five films set in or immediately after World War II. The most interesting to me is The Invisibles (Claus Räfle), about the few Jews who remained in Berlin at the height of the war. Other films are Across the Water (Nicolo Donato), about an escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark; 1945 (Ferenc Török), reconciling Nazi complicity in an Hungarian village; The Children of Chance (Malik Chibane), where unexpected circumstances allow a young Jewish boy to survive; and in The Light of Hope (Silvia Quer), based on a true story about a maternity home that gave shelter to women fleeing both the Spanish Civil War and Vichy France……Three other films round out the program. Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators, a doc about the Jewish authors of the beloved children’s book, Hans and Margret Ray; Joe’s Violin (Kahane Cooperman), a short doc about an aged violinist who donates his violin to an impoverished girl in the Bronx; and, Let Yourself Go (Francesco Amato), a feel good comedy set in contemporary Rome about a stuffy psychoanalyst and his free spirited trainer......For more info go to www.jewishwindsor.org