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Fact, Fiction and Folklore in Film and Television

  • 26/03/2024
  • 18:00-19:30
  • online talk

Diane A. Rodgers original artwork

Fact, Fiction and Folklore in Film and Television

A Folklore Society Online talk

by Dr Diane A. Rodgers (Sheffield Hallam University)

Tuesday 26 March 2024, 18:00 GMT

Folklore brings us tales of witches, ghosts and ghouls, myths and legends. How these are communicated in the media can influence our beliefs, actions and understanding of the world, but it doesn’t mean they are literally true. Folklore is a core element of folk horror often overlooked. Horror indeed draws from folklore but, whilst monsters and slasher villains like Freddy Krueger may have folkloric origins, the films in which such characters appear are not necessarily folk horror. Folk horror is not even always horrific or merely restricted to the medium of film: its eerie dissonance can be observed extending beyond boundaries of genre and medium. This talk explores the conventions of what we now think of as film and television folk horror, and discusses folk horror as part of a broader cultural context arising from 1970s popular culture and its continued impact on filmmakers today.

Dr Diane A. Rodgers is Senior Lecturer in Culture and Media and a co-founder of the Centre for Contemporary Legend Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Interested in all things wyrd, cult and horror-related, Diane is working on a monograph about 1970s British folk horror and hauntology (when she’s not making punk rock noise with her band The Sleazoids). Diane has published articles in Folklore, book chapters in recent collections on folk horror from Routledge and Manchester University Press, is co-editor of The Legacy of The X-Files, forthcoming from Bloomsbury and a Director of the Forthcoming film festival FFS: Females / Films /Screens, championing the work of women in cinema.

Tickets £6.00 (£4.00 for Folklore Society members with Promo Code–log in to https://folklore-society.com/members-only to get the promo code) from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fact-fiction-and-folklore-in-film-and-television-tickets-807779108057?

Every ticket sold helps to support the work of The Folklore Society

Image credit: Diane A. Rodgers, original artwork