Culture & prejudice: Lifting Veils...

A joyful evening at the Oxford Jewish Centre, chairing a Film Evening for the Council of Christians and Jews. OJC is an interesting place, serving as home to both an Orthodox and a Reform congregation, who seem to enjoy life together. They regularly socialise with characteristic verve and panache, around times of worship even, when custard pies are genrally eaten not thrown. Combative Christians take note: Such things are possible.

And in that context, I was vastly impressed by our film— Veils, by Dan Susman, a young Jewish film-maker. It’s a witty, beautifully crafted short — indeed the quality of its cinematorgaphy left me longing to see it one day on a very large screen. It tells the story of a Jewish bride and Palestinian Arab Groom in North London, but as the IMDB says, it’s not the standard Romeo and Juliet story — not quite. Maureen Lipman heads a strong cast. Janie Booth’s stony-faced Meshugeneh is unforgettably nightmare-inducing.

Made by a typical team of Jews, Palestinians and Bengali Italians, Veils could have been a right old mix-up — but it isn’t. It has powerful intellectual foundations, in which anthropology buffs will recognise the influence of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. I don’t want to spoil the film’s twists and subtleties for anyone else who gets to see it, but it doesn’t half make you think of your own assumptions about other people, wherever you belong on the soggy liberal to hardball chauvinist scale.