Talk # 8:Sonay Ban (PhD, Cultural Anthropologist) : "Objectionable Subjects, Banned Films: Politics of Censorship in Post-2000 Turkey

Talk Abstract: Film censorship in Turkey has been an ongoing practice, just as in many countries around the world, since the arrival of cinema at the turn of the 20^th century. While the Western approaches to censorship theories from the 1980s onwards prioritize the withdrawal of the state as the primary agency for censorship, practices and mechanisms in Turkey draw a different picture: On one level, film censorship still operates mainly and effectively through state institutions such as the General Directorate of Cinema (GDC) under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MoCT). On another level, state institutions simultaneously grant well-calculated power to its designated non-state actors, acting as “proxies of the state” to effectively perform censorship on the state’s behalf when needed. They range from festival organizers to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) tied to large corporations, from art institutions to trade and cinema unions. This talk will provide recent examples from contemporary practices through case studies and display how various financial, cultural, and bureaucratic webs of coalitions, as well as agreements between state institutions and their proxies, pave the way for redefining and maintaining often nonpublic censorship mechanisms and practices as well as overt ones.