BY KAREN BOSSICK
“Remembering Gene Wilder” will kick off the Sun Valley Jewish Film Festival tonight.
The free screening of the tribute documentary will start at 6 p.m. tonight—Wednesday, July 10--at Ketchum’s Community Library.
The hour-and-a-half film stars Alan Alda, Mel Brooks and Harry Connick Jr reminiscing about their friend who portrayed Willy Wonka in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” and also starred in “Young Frankenstein,” “Blazing Saddles,” and “The Producers.”
There will be a special appearance by Sun Valley musical legend Joe Cannon.
The festival will continue at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 16, with “AKA Doc Pomus” The film examines Jerome Felder, who was paralyzed by polio as a child but went on to reinvent himself, first as a blues singer named Doc Pomus, then as one of America’s popular music’s songwriters. He composed “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “This Magic Moment” and “A Teenager in Love.” And he composed more than 20 songs for Elvis Presley, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Surrender” and “Little Sister.”
This year’s festival will conclude on July 18 with the hour-long film “The ‘Real’ Inglorious Bastards.” The documentary looks at the secret commando unit of World War II Jewish refugees trained by U.S. intelligence to help defeat the Nazis.
The Office of Strategic Services put the Jewish refugees behind enemy lines to serve a spies in Nazi-held territory. Some of their deeds surpassed even the fictional feats in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Bastards,” which was shown a few years ago at the Sun Valley Film Festival.
Joe Cannon is scheduled to appear at the latter two films, as well.