A Charedi film has been shown to a women-only audience in London, after plans for two previous screenings were scrapped over fears they would breach equality laws.

The Gift of Fire, made by strictly Orthodox female director Rechy Elias, was watched by around 60 women at a private, invitation-only screening at the Jewish community centre JW3 on Friday afternoon.

JW3 had cancelled a previous, public, screening after taking legal advice over Ms Elias’s insistence that men should be barred.

The audience on Friday was made up of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox women.

There was general agreement that Ms Elias was justified in insisting that her film – which has an all-female cast and tells the story of a young Orthodox woman at time of the Spanish Inquisition - should not be seen by men.

One audience member, called Ariel, drew a comparison with women reading the Torah.

She said: “People say that women cannot read from the Torah. That’s not true; they can, just not in front of men. Even the most religious people wouldn’t dispute that.
“This is similar. People have a creativity in them and when you create something you want people to able to see it. I’m glad it could be seen.”

Another film-goer said that although the material in the film was not explicit, it was right for it to be kept private from men because, “from an Orthodox point of view, women don’t want men to be looking at them and listening to them singing.”

The Gift of Fire was shown as part of Seret 2015, the Festival of Israeli Film and Television. Festival organisers had previously withdrawn the film from a screening at the Odeon Swiss Cottage after the cinema refused to bar men.