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"Chic ! meets" : Juan Amador - "A potted history" of the Coconut chair - "Rising trends" : Concrete jewellery - "What to do with" oranges ? - "Insights" : Joris Laarman

"Chic ! meets" : Juan Amador
This week's creative talent is chef Juan Amador. His penchant for experimenting and his molecular adventures have earned him increasing recognition, but despite this success, he continues to seek out new flavours to stand out from commonplace cuisine. A philosophy he puts into daily practice at his restaurant in Langen, a few kilometres outside Frankfurt.

"A potted history" of the Coconut chair
It's the story of an American designer, Georges Nelson who loved to create furniture that was aesthetic, practical and philosophical. All his creations had to embody the idea of progress and modernity. He worked with the greatest names of his era, Charles and Ray Eames, who invented the molded shell, and Isamu Noguchi, who designed the famous Akari lamps. In the 1950s, he had fun inventing two completely offbeat armchairs - the Marshmallow Bench and the Coconut Chair. The idea behind the chair was to reproduce the form of a shell. Georges Nelson took his inspiration from shapes in nature to design a totally curved chair. Moulded in plastic and glass fibre, supported by three small chrome legs, the Coconut Chair met with huge success particularly among wealthy American industrialists. 82 cm high, 104 cm wide, and 84 cm deep, the Coconut Chair embodies simplicity, comfort and mobility. The Coconut Chair today resides in the most prestigious museums. It has become a veritable 20th century design icon.

"Rising trends" : Concrete jewellery
Jewellery designers, like Patrice Fabre and Marie-Françoise Rouy are taking their inspiration from increasingly surprising sources, particularly from concrete.

"What to do with" oranges ?
We asked top pasty chef Pierre Hermé what to do with an orange, a fruit that is omnipresent in Spain. Especially for Chic, the Parisian pastry chef concocted an exceptional dessert.

"Insights" : Joris Laarman
You've probably already heard of the young trio of Dutch designers, the Demekersvans. Today we meet their neighbour in the workshop next to them in Rotterdam - Joris Laarman, another design prodigy. Like the Demerkersvans, he was noticed at the Endhoven design school by the great priestess of trends, Li Edelkoort. The young man's talent carried him along... and he earned immediate recognition. Blending poetry and experimentation, Joris Laarman's objects and pieces of furniture have already become design classics and are now on display at major international biennials.

What if bodybuilding was not just a simple sporting and aesthetic discipline? What if it the practice was actually conforming to the social pressures of our neoliberal society, by celebrating and encouraging the constant surpassing of oneself?

With the help of illustrious weight trainers and experts, All Brawn offers a fascinating look into the history and culture of this art of performance. Gain insight into this mass phenomenon, a metaphor for the obsession with control and cost-efficiency.

Loic Prigent opens the secret doors of Paris Fashion Week. Interviews of creative directors, journalists and influencers help us understand this obscure microcosm and give us the keys to fully apprehend this hidden industry.

Loic’s camera films discreetly and lets the viewer observe as a real attendee of these crazy fashion moments. Paris Fashion Week enables the audience to finally experience and understand the unique circus of fashion shows.
 
AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH: THE EXCEPTIONAL SHOW

40 minutes in total immersion in the fashion world with Mademoiselle Agnès. Ten days of fashion, stimulated by the new generation of designers, reassured by the old guard, and dazzled by hallucinating scenography.

As every season Mademoiselle Agnes immerses herself in the backstage of women's ready-to-wear to take the tension of the business, to measure the height of the heels as well as the morale of the troops.
 

To mark his 50th year as a designer, Jean Paul Gaultier held his final show in 2020 in Paris, with an event combining models and artistic performances. Let’s look back at his incredible career and personality.

With exclusive access, Loïc Prigent’s documentary follows the legendary bad-boy of French fashion in this exercise in virtuosity and celebration, a retrospective on a career and a demonstration that his creativity remains undiminished. The perfect occasion to look back on 50 years of classic designs which left their stamp on fashion: The corset, the sailor top, tattoo prints, skirts for men, and Haute Couture revisited.

After decades of growth and ostentation, when every excess was allowed, the fashion industry is currently at a turning point, caught up in the political issues that are reshaping our times: The environment and sustainable development, cultural representation and appropriation, equality, gender issues...

Brands and creators are now subject to increasingly sharp public scrutiny. How is the fashion industry facing these challenges and responding to this new paradigm? Based as it is on the concept of planned obsolescence, can fashion survive?

This film opens the doors to the work of a unique creator with a creative process always on the move and with a unique know-how. He reveals himself as a free and passionate alchemist who imagines shoes as real works of art.

Instinctive and spontaneous, Christian Louboutin is a creator with a singular journey. Constantly on the alert, he develops immediately recognizable collections of shoes and accessories to keep pace with the seasons.
From distant destinations where he isolates himself to draw without constraint, away from the factory in Italy where a rigor and meticulous know-how reigns, Christian Louboutin reveals to us, behind the scenes, of a creative process made of exchanges and travels.
Over the months, we follow Christian Louboutin in his daily life and we witness the birth of an exceptional event: the design of the first major exhibition dedicated to him in France which will be held at Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris starting February 2020.
This documentary is an opportunity for the creator to share his love for shoes, to pay a vibrant tribute to the artists and craftsmen who crossed his path while returning to his sources of inspiration and the enthusiasm aroused by the act of creation for him.

Who was Ali ? This first and only real portrait, contrary to recent stock shot montages, brings a powerful, often hilarious, and always entertaining answer.

In 1964, Cassius Clay becomes heavy-weight champion of the world and declares his name is Muhammad Ali. A date in sports history and a turning point in black awareness.

It was a searing look into boxing, into the Southern power structure, inside the Black Muslims. Muhammad Ali explodes on the scene constantly catching America off guard, the first black champion to declare himself free. Eventually, it cost him his title, 3 years enforced retirement, and many millions of dollars.

Muhammad Ali, an aging 32 year-old, who no longer Floats-like-a-Butterfly-and-Stings-like-a-Bee, no longer a revolutionary figure but nostalgia, wants his title back, or, at least, one last big pay check and he shall fight the terrifying Foreman.
And at all odds, this is the end of the most extraordinary sports career of all time.
October 31, 5:30am, Kinshasa, Zaïre. Ali stands triumphant over Foreman, bewildered and K.O How did Ali, underdog, ex-martyr, become once again an all-time hero, champion and legend ?

Matera is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. A limestone city with habitats carved into the rock. In the heart of this white city, another heritage, just as precious: bread.

Over here, it is much more than a food. It is the synthesis of a history and a territory.

“Body building”: to build your own body. While the concept has been around for more than a century, 40 years ago we used to laugh at Conan and Rambo flexing their pectorals.

The laughter has subsided now, the bodybuilder and the “fit girl” have become standards of the times. Muscles are not just an organ anymore, they are a social model.

The Paris Fashion Week takes place every year at the beginning of March. Loïc Prigent takes you on a tour of the most beautiful fashion shows – prepare to be dazzled. Discover next winter's trends and interviews with all the designers who matter.

A very special Fashion Week 2020 that sometimes borders on the outlandish. It was the last big international event in Paris before the health crisis. Carefree and crazy, behind the scenes or on the catwalk, watch the last Fashion Week before the world forever changed.

Corsican hospitality can only be fully experienced by those who take the time to discover the local terroir and specialties. Two foreign chefs can attest of this: English chef Simon Andrews in Ajaccio and Italian chef Fabio Bragagnolo in Porto Vecchio.

While the two managed to retain an Italian or English touch in their cuisine, they have also highlighted the island's culinary wealth as well as its unrivaled flavors. We follow them in their quest for the most genuine products from local producers of veal, cheese, saffron, olive oil, oyster and bluefin tuna – before tasting their delicious dishes.