ABSTRACT
Cinema is a universal art form in so much as it is a language that gives rise to a plurality of expressions made from sound and image. As narrative, film also draws from intellectual schematics common to humanity, that are themselves born with/in the narrative form – hence the universal success of American cinema. But cinema is also underpinned by cultural codes that assure a certain grounding in a specific environment. In short, we are faced with a universal language that expresses itself through localized [cultural] codes, which can also be seen as a means of translating a specific relationship to time and space. The “plan américain” (a medium-long shot, used to film a group of characters) was so specific to the character of the American West that it became classic. Film language is thus transformed by cultural codes. The same is true for the use of the close-up in Egyptian cinema or the wide shot in Sub-Saharan African cinema. The arrival of sound cinema further reinforced this evolution toward a greater “cultural specificity” from an apparatus that had originally been seen as technically neutral. Dialogue in sound cinema offered further “local” opportunity to cultures that were supposedly sustained by orality.
