Ritual Reconstructed: PRIDE Seder

A staging of the LGBT+ Progressive Jewish Religious service to mark London Pride June 2015. The service, the onscreen ritual incorporating religious and secular elements (artefacts having intertextual links to LGBT+ history and culture, eg Stonewall Riots 1969, CAMP, Hollywood films) are constituted by the LGBT+ Jewish community members and Rabbi to create new ritual, one that places LGBT+ experience within the evolving umbrella of Progressive Jewish experience in the UK.

One of 5 films made for the Ritual Reconstructed project (funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council), Pride Seder (Kochberg 2015) is an ethnographic documentary (part ritual record, part interactive documentary) filmed on the 2015 eve-of-London Pride Seder at South London Liberal Synagogue.

An orange takes centre stage on the ceremonial plate at this ‘seder’ ritual (Hebrew for ‘order’), along with other ‘foreign’ queer objects to be tinkered with at this LGBTQI bricolage event: a drag queen’s high heel shoe, a brick, foreign fruits, and rainbow coloured ribbons... The orange symbolises inclusivity made up of many segments, it form[s] a whole. The visual language in the film is an exploration of ethnographic record and interactive documentary.