Fiction film is a form of folk culture. A “new” folk culture. We sit around the screen in the same way that previously people would have sat next to storytellers. Movies where beautiful women fly and kick ass are great. They draw on legend, storytelling, myth and the supernatural. When humans fly or choke men wrapping their hair around their necks, it is easy to see the connection between fiction film and folk culture.

Films have many fragments of folk in and around them. Sometimes like in the movie “The Fast Runner”, the film is a narration of an older legend. Other times like in “Dolls”, a narrative grows from folk culture. Other films have contributed to folk culture itself: directors such as Woody Allen helped create legends of New York. Many fictional films try to moralize along the same lines that traditional folk stories have done. Todd Solondz uses storytelling and fiction to talk about racism and class structure. And there are directors who deal with morality in a less controversial way, like Lukas Moodysson. But the most prominent theme in film is love.In Wong Kar Wei films lovers always have to part: departure is one of the great folk themes.

Fiction film may also create folk culture. Cult movies create their own folk culture. Often based on myth or folklore themselves, films such as Star Wars grow out into the culture and become much larger than a fiction film. Its characters become part of our everyday life, its worlds accepted as characters from a shared history.
This may occur outside of the mainstream as well: Japanimation films of the 20th century created images of Japan for outsiders in the some way that Kiarustami created images of Iran, outside of Iran.

Fiction film also is about cultural identity, about creating and recreating the folklore of a country. In the some way as Bollywood is part of India’s folk culture, Dogma is now part of Scandinavian’s folk culture, both for people inside and outside of those cultures. Because film (and folklore) expresses the concerns, ideas and reality of a community, thus each community will do it in a different way.
Fiction film fulfills several roles such as entertainment, education, myth and wish-fulfillment. Likewise, in folk tales there are usually several layers of interpretation and purpose that blend fantasy with reality. In fiction films there are images that illustrate the impossible by special effects such as CGI, while in folk culture, images are suggested by the storyteller and developed in our minds. So, in that sense, special effects are filmic renderings of our imaginations.

My mother says she doesn’t like movies, and that she particularly dislikes science fiction. She says that movies aren’t real. She prefers to watch talk shows or to talk to people face to face. She is partially right: many films construct reality in clouded and dubious ways. But ultimately, fiction film, folklore, myth and legend are interchangeable, and they are as part of our reality as a trip to the shop.

A. Salinas