Folklore Literature in Animation Cinema and Content Production Feasibility Based on Azeri Romantic Folktales

Iranian animation cinema has to grow in both content and technology in order to succeed. One of the problems of today's animated commercial cinema in Iran is the lack of good stories that are appropriate to both animation cinema’s features and the Iranian audience’s interests. Because in today's world, popular culture is closely linked to the mass media, many commercial producers use fairy-tales with romantic themes for commercial success and impact on audiences. Therefore, this hypothesis has been raised that fairy-tales are considered one of the best sources of inspiration for producing content for animation cinema. Regarding to this hypothesis, it appears that Azeri romantic folk-tales have the enough potential to inspire. The main question is why and how can romantic tales in Azeri folklore literature, which run in the tradition of Aşıqliğ, be considered as valuable sources of inspiration according to the characteristics of animation cinema to produce works, both in terms of content and structure? To answer this question, first, the characteristics of suitable stories for animation are investigated and four indicators are obtained, and then, nine Azeri folk-tales have been analyzed by Vladimir Prop’s morphology. Finally, we compare the tales with four indicators. The collection tool is bibliographic and a descriptive-analytical method is used to explain the research results. Consequently, it can be said that these nine tales have all the characteristics of fantasy, romance, musicality, and adventure and can be valuable sources of inspiration for Iranian animation cinema, especially for commercial purposes.