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Inflame (Kaygi), a first feature by Ceylan Ozgun Ozcelik, is a psychological thriller centered on a woman who suffers recurring nightmares of working on a TV news channel. She lives alone in an apartment left to her by her parents, who died in a car crash 20 years earlier. But the nightmares are actually memories, and her parents could still be alive. Inflame is the only Turkish film playing this year at the Berlin Film Festival, where it world premiered Sunday (Feb. 12) in the Panorama section.

Ozelik, a former movie critic on television,spoke to Variety about how the film, written with guidance from the Sundance Film Institutes Screenwriters Lab in Istanbul, reflects her countrys recent history and current climate. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Inflame germinated at a time when the situation in Turkey was less turbulent. Can you talk to me about the choice of title?

The Turkish title is Kaygi, which is actually a different word. Kaygi in Turkish means worry or anxiety. Its a very popular word in Turkey now. The Sundance lab in Turkey helped me come up with the English-language title.

How do you feel about the idea that due to the title people are going to associate it with the post-coup climate?

The film actually turns on something that happened in the 90s. The protagonist is searching for some kind of sense of her parents death. She has been brought up thinking they died in a car accident. Its about memory and forgetting, but also about the oblivion generated by a collaboration between the government and mass media. When I started writing this film I started asking myself, How much can one forget? Is there a limit to this oblivion? It was unavoidable that the main character was a journalist working in the mainstream media, as I did.

How is your experience working in Turkish TV reflected in the film?

Though I never worked as a news journalist, I observed my friends and co-workers in situations that I could not actually put in the script because the audience would think that its overwritten, exaggerated. For almost two years, I worked for this production company that worked directly for government TV. They would get names of certain people that had to be excluded from the news, especially from social media.

Yet this film is partly funded by the government.

Yes, the Ministry of Culture has seen a longer version of the film, in order for it to get financing.

Can you tell me how the Sundance lab helped you with the script?

I was accepted into the lab with just a 60-page draft. I had two tutors, Naomi Foner and Howard Rodman, who were very helpful. They explained to me what was missing in terms of the connections between the films themes. I was also told that Inflame was reminiscent of Polanskis The Tenant, which made me very happy because I was drawing inspiration from that film. They encouraged me, and this was very meaningful to me.

How deliberate was the choice of venturing into thriller territory?

I just love thrillers; I am crazy about them. The apartment is a very strong symbolic element that you have in many thrillers, especially those that deal with traumatic events from the past. In this case, history seeps into the apartment, and the most powerful support [to this narrative device] comes from the sound.

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Director Ceylon zgn zelik On 'Inflame' and Censorship in ... - Variety

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Are we to be ruled by anarchists and have mob rule?

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Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines, Letter to the Editor 6:21 p.m. CT Feb. 10, 2017

Students from City and West High lead protesters down the pedestrian mall during a rally against President Trump's travel ban on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017.(Photo: David Scrivner/Iowa City Press-Citizen)

If we really have free speech in this country, as provided by law, then any lawful program should be able to be held on any campus. Whether any of us, including university administration or the news media, agree with the sponsors or their subject matter, should have nothing to do with the right to hold the program.

Lawful protest is to be respected, but universities and the local government have the responsibility to protect the people and the property from rioters. Are we to be ruled by anarchists and have mob rule? If the police need to get tough to enforce the law, so be it.

If universities knuckle under threats of rioters, it will only encourage more censorship of what the mob does not want to hear, all across the country.

Sheldon Rabinowitz, Des Moines

Read or Share this story: http://dmreg.co/2kYEG0s

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Mob censorship can't be tolerated - DesMoinesRegister.com

Free expression seems to be top of mind in the Bay Area these days. Ive been thinking about it, too but not in the context of how one should respond to a decadent disrupter whos chosen to threaten vulnerable people as part of his personal brand.

No, Ive been thinking not about Berkeley but about a quieter case in San Jose.

Thats where the Rev. Jeff Moore, a counselor at Independence High School in San Jose and president of the San Jose/Silicon Valley branch of the NAACP, was putting together the annual Black History Month display for the district office of East Side Union High School District.

Moore had seen and liked the work of Mark Harris, 47, a San Francisco painter and mixed-media artist. So he asked Harris to pull together a small exhibit of his work. Harris agreed. He drove down to San Jose and installed the work in the districts display cases on Jan. 30.

On Jan. 31, Harris woke up to a two-line email from Moore, saying that his work had been taken down.

So began a local censorship controversy thats stretched into a third week. Multiple media outlets have covered the story, and the National Coalition Against Censorship has taken an interest.

I should mention that Harris was an acquaintance of mine before any of this happened.

"Immigration Theory," a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris

"Immigration Theory," a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris

But my hunch is that Id probably have the same response even if I didnt know him: oh, no.

Pretty much, Harris said, Ive never had this happen before. Its disappointing because we have to tackle these issues if were going to come together as a country. And what better place to start this conversation than a school district?

Moore said hed hung Black History Month displays at the district for several years in a row, with no problems. Previous displays had been portraits of civil rights leaders, libraries of slave narratives and other pieces from Moores home.

This year, I thought these paintings were educational and gave us a chance to be in a dialogue with what America is talking about, Moore said.

The paintings are definitely political, verging on agit-prop: They juxtapose wholesome, 1950s-era kitsch images of white America with images of slavery, the Confederate flag and anti-police-brutality protests. These are certainly ideas that are in the public conversation.

I called Chris Funk, the superintendent who removed the paintings. He described the incident as a big misunderstanding.

This was an unfortunate incident that had nothing to do with Mark Harris, Funk said. It was about an employee who didnt have permission to display that work.

Moore didnt receive district approval for the contents of the display before inviting Harris to install his work, Funk said. After Harris left, Funk said he was called out of a meeting because parents and staff members had complained about the works content.

So he took all of it down.

When the public comes into the district office, they have an expectation that they shouldnt be surprised by provocative or political artwork, Funk said. Our responsibility is to provide a safe place for discussion, not to push an agenda.

Den of Iniquity, a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris.

Den of Iniquity, a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris.

I didnt find this convincing, for a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that children watch adults in classrooms push agendas each and every day.

The idea of a neutral, idea-free education may be a comforting one for adults, but no child would be naive enough to believe it, and theyre right.

The second reason I found Funks argument unconvincing is the matter of providing the specific students at East Side Union High School District with a safe place for discussion. East Side Union is a majority-minority school district 46 percent of the students are Latino, 34 percent are Asian. Only 8 percent of students are white, as is Funk.

How in the world, I asked him, can you say youre providing those students with a safe place for discussion if the political viewpoints of people of color African Americans, in this case are considered to be too controversial to be admitted?

Funk returned to the idea of a process that hadnt been followed.

The good news is that all of the attention inspired Harris and Funk to sit down and hammer out a solution. At 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15, the districts office will host a workshop with Harris, the students and their parents.

The workshop is open to all of the districts students, parents and with an RSVP the public. Harris plans to lead the students through a discussion of his work and ask them to talk about their own reactions.

Its a great moment to talk about these issues, and I want the kids to feel empowered to do so, Harris said. Weve been ingrained to not discuss this stuff, and its not healthy.

Tell me about it. If the district officials had been a little more comfortable talking about difficult issues, this entire mess could have been prevented.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner

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Censorship versus free speech at a very local level - San Francisco Chronicle

Forbes

What Wikipedia's Daily Mail 'Ban' Tells Us About The Future Of Online Censorship Forbes How was this decision made, what kind of data fed into this decision-making process and what does it tell us about the future of censorship and who decides what is real on the Internet, especially as social media platforms increasingly play the role ... and more »

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What Wikipedia's Daily Mail 'Ban' Tells Us About The Future Of Online Censorship - Forbes

Cannabis.com, GayEgypt.com, Circumcision.org, WhitePower.com, and yes, HardSexTube.com are all sites that the Tor Projects new app pointed my iPhone towards this morning. Dont worry, its all for a good cause.

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) has been around for the last five years or so, but its software suite, Ooniprobe, only existed as command line-installable a desktop software package. Sponsored by the Tor Projectbest known for its mostly secure Tor web browserOoniprobe seeks to map where internet censorship is taking place via a live map. Unsurprisingly, the US is largely unaffected while Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia arent so lucky.

As of today, Ooniprobe is available as an Android or iOS app that even the least computer savvy but censorship-concerned internet user can easily install. That is, if the warnings in the markedly easier installation process dont scare you half to death.

The mere use of ooniprobe might be viewed as a form of espionage, regardless of the laws in your country, the welcome screen warns, we encourage you to consult with a lawyer prior to installing and running ooniprobe. New York is in the middle of a snowstorm, and I dont exactly keep legal counsel on retainer, so that didnt happen. The same screen warns potential users that the app will download data from provocative or objectionable sites (e.g. pornography) as you may already have guessed.

Ooniprobes risks page describes the possibility of severe civil, criminal, or extra-judicial penalties such as being assaulted or targeted for surveillance. Caveating the whole thing is the disclaimer: The risks described below are quite speculative. To our knowledge, no ooniprobe user has ever faced consequences from the risks described below. Hmm.

As to the app itself, the web connectivity test is the meat of its functionality. Essentially it attempts to visit a slew of sites which range from mundane email portals (hotmail.msn.com) to the Air Forces F-35 Lightning II page (jsf.mil). At the same time, a server tries to get to those same pages and if they load differently its flagged in red as potentially censored. Ooniprobes test sites are, as The Atlantic points out, a list built collaboratively between OONI and Citizen Project and aim to catalog crucial services or controversial content most likely to be censored. (Flatteringly, our sister site Jezebel made the cut.)

The app seems to give plenty of false positives. Among the supposedly censored sites were sex toy site realdoll.com, kids.yahoo.com, myspace.com, and metacrawler.com, all of which worked just fine on desktop. Ooniprobes helpful suggestions to avoid being denied the full scope of Real Dolls online retail website are to use open DNS (check), force HTTPS (which most browsers now do by default), or to use the Tor browser (Tor is not presently available on iOS).

Currently, the only other two tests included in this mobile build of Ooniprobe are an HTTP Invalid request test and a standard speed test. The former showed no anomaly and the latter gave me upload, download, and ping times comparable to Ooklas industry-standard speed test.

So what have we learned from this experience? Internet censorship isnt really happening on an infrastructural level in the USat least not in a way this app can detect it. And even though youre unlikely to be sent to a gulag for installing Ooniprobe, pinging WhitePower.com has definitely landed me on some sort of watchlist.

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Why Did an Internet Censorship App Send My Phone to ... - Gizmodo - Gizmodo