A Utopian word then, yet a Utopia teetering on the edge of terrifying darkness: for just as the word ‘folk’ has been associated with some of the most inspiring Leftist struggles for recognition and political revisionism, so it has also been associated with many of the darkest moments in history.
It’s a strange and powerful word that can seemingly straddle such a dizzying spectrum of different cultural and historical locations, and attempt to bring them into some sort of alignment. So if our programme is anything to go by, ‘folk’ can be rural and urban pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial can embody an address to the present, to the past, or both can be traditional, contemporary, or both it can be rooted and bounded, or diasporic and hybrid, or – once again – it can be both. A skim through our programme suggests just how broad the ‘folk’ catchment is: whether its the early 80’s Hebridean shepherding community in SHEPHERDS OF BENERAY, the 40’s Orcadian fishermen in VENUS PETER, or the 90’s Tyneside trotting community in the Amber Collective’s brilliant EDEN VALLEY, and the Bradford scrap metal business in 2013’s THE SELFISH GIANT or the farm labourers in 70’s Ethiopia in Third Cinema classic HARVEST 3000 YEARS, the Sardinian shepherds in PADRE PADRONE and TEMPUS DE BARISTAS, or the residents of the Native American Pine Ridge Reservation in 2015’s SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME. We seem to use the word ‘folk’ a lot in Scotland and whilst every one of us (myself included) seems to think we know what it means, a look round Scotland and the West more widely serves to illustrate that ‘folk’ means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.Īll of the films at the Folk Film Gathering this year enact their own ideas of ‘folk’. Putting together this year’s programme for the Folk Film Gathering I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the word ‘folk’: about what it means and whether, in 2016, it’s still a useful word for progressive political projects in Scotland and further afield.
The Folk Film Gathering – the world’s first folk film festival – takes place from 28th April to the 12th May, at Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Scottish Storytelling Centre. There’s nowt so queer as ‘folk’: is the word folk useful anymore? by Jamie Chambers.
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