ARTE France.
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This documentary addresses the major environmental challenges of our century by investigating a forgotten gas from Earth's past. With up to 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, methane emissions could threaten life on earth. From the Arctic Ocean to Siberia to the Antarctic, what impact will this greenhouse gas have on our climate? Join scientific teams from the U.K., Russia, Denmark, Canada, France, and the U.S. as they study the effects...
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Located in the bowels of the Earth, Tartarus was the prison of the Underworld, the place where fallen Gods and banished heroes ended up. The Gods also sent three men there... The first was Sisyphus. A roguish trader, Sisyphus dared denounce Zeus for taking away a young woman he was intending to seduce. His punishment was to roll a boulder up a mountain for evermore. The second man to be sent to Tartarus was Tantalus. Close to the Gods, King Tantalus...
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Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed the Säynätsalo Center, which houses local government offices and a public library on an island in Lake Päijänne. Inspired by Italian Renaissance architecture, a raised courtyard is bordered by a glass-enclosed circulation space and accessed by grass stairs. The town hall is crowned by the council chamber, a double-height space which is capped by innovative "Butterfly" trusses supporting both the roof and...
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Daedalus, a prominent Greek inventor, settled in Crete among King Minos' court. Queen Pasiphaë, who had an all-consuming passion for a white bull, called upon his services. The Sea God Poseidon had given the bull to her husband King Minos as a present, and King Minos had refused to sacrifice it for him. To take his revenge, Poseidon cast a spell on the poor Pasiphaë. Following orders, Daedalus found a solution to enable the queen to mate with the...
6) Theseus
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Theseus was the fruit of dual paternity: Aegeus King of Athens slept with Aethra when she had just been raped by Poseidon, God of the Sea. Theseus, who grew into a strong, brave young man, therefore had a double lineage - both divine and royal. Unsurprisingly, once he was old enough to fight, he decided to leave for Crete to take on the terrible Minotaur, which devoured 14 young Athenians a year, delivered to Minos, King of Crete. The Minotaur, one...
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On his quest to find the Golden Fleece, Jason asked the cruel King of Colchis and his daughter Medea, a powerful sorceress, for help. Medea fell in love with Jason, helped him to find the precious Fleece, and fled with him. Numerous adventures and misfortunes stemmed from this passionate encounter, and poor Medea seemed to be at the origin of them. The two young lovers took refuge in Greece, got married, and Medea gave birth to two children. But one...
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Leading contemporary artists delegate whole sections of the production of their works. Increasingly today, contemporary art is the result of a collective effort. Engineers, designers, architects, artisans, workers, glass-makers, smelters, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, jewelry-makers, "highbrows" and "helping hands", whether they possess high-tech or ancestral know-how -they all work in the shadows to produce today's art. This documentary follows the...
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Built at the dawn of the 20th century, the Glasgow School of Art is the masterpiece of the only British artist considered as a precursor of modernity, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The most eminent practitioner of the "Glasgow Style", the equivalent of French Art Nouveau, Mackintosh devoted more than 10 years to fulfilling what is without doubt his most innovative architectural project, a masterwork that combines constructive rationality, Art nouveau...
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The Paimio armchair is one of the emblematic objects by Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto. Designed for the Paimio sanatorium in Finland in 1931, it is one of a series of "accessories of architecture." The Paimio armchair, which was revolutionary in its design and ergonomics, affords patients the ideal sitting position in which to breathe and sunbathe during their treatment. Alvar Aalto's designs from the beginning of the 1930s were inspired...
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From 1928 to 1932, the avant-garde decorator and furniture maker, Pierre Chareau, constructed the Paris House of Glass for Dr. Dr. Dalsace in the early modern style of architecture. The house's design emphasized three primary traits: honesty of materials, variable transparency of forms, and juxtaposition of "industrial" materials and fixtures with a more traditional style of home décor. It is a machine to be lived in, full of surprises and strokes...
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Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. The Johnson Wax Building, which houses offices and a research laboratory, is numbered amongst his masterpieces. Located in Racine, Wisconsin, the Johnson Building is an example of a streamlined modern architectural design. The Great Workroom has no internal walls and its ceiling is held up with "mushroom" columns tapering to narrow points. Curved bricks make up the building...
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Built in 1926, the Bauhaus at Dessau remains Walter Gropius' most important building and one of the most famous examples of twentieth-century architecture. This higher academy of the arts connected crafts and art to industrial design where artists, filmmakers and furniture designers joined teachers like Klee and Kandinski. The glass walls, angles and flat roofs were new and became a landmark for modern architecture. Gropius influenced industrial architecture...
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In three pencil strokes, Philippe Starck explains his concept of the Bubble Sofa Club. Take a Twenties classic Club and make it into a simple, modern and innovating settee. Whereas the Club sofa was the privilege of middle-class interiors, Philippe Starck reinterprets this object with a greater concern for making it accessible to all. Using a hollow polyethylene casing manufactured in the roto mold process, the final product is a robust, ecological...
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Brazil is said to be a sleeping giant waking up to become one of the world leaders. Our film will tell the country's history through the eyes of two families over several generations. In one of the families, the slaves of before became domestic workers, and the former domestics are now employees, with fixed hours and living in their own homes, where they raise their own children rather than those of their bosses. They have reached the middle class....
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What should we do with our dead? Incinerate them? Bury them? Make them disappear? Keep them nearby and visit them? A memorial spanning 20th century architecture and inspired by Le Corbusier and Richard Long, the Igualada Cemetery merges into the countryside near Barcelona. As in the rest of Spain, the dead are not buried, but rather piled into niches, superimposed tombs. Designed by Catalan architects Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos at the start of...
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Bellerophon, the grandson of Sisyphus, one of the Greek world's worst criminals, dreamt of becoming a hero, of being equal to the Gods. But his plans got off to a bad start with the accidental murder of his brother. Forced into exile, he took refuge in Tyrins. But there too, nothing went according to plan: accused of rape by Queen Stheneboea, he left to visit the King of Lycia, who in a bid to get rid of him, imposed fearsome challenges on him. Bellerephon...
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Austrian architect Margarete Schütte Lihotzky's 6.5 square meter kitchen rationalized domestic space. Designed in 1926 for the New Frankfurt social housing project and inspired by American and German efficiency studies, this layout pioneered new standards, promoted hygiene, and championed Viennese modernist aesthetics. 10, 000 units were installed, which makes the Frankfurter Kitchen the first industrially produced "fitted kitchen".
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A new place of culture, created in 2004, following the reconversion of a municipal venue and the abandonment of a political utopia. In the early 1970s, architect Jacques Kalisz was asked to build an administrative complex, grouping together under one roof a set of administrative, social and legal services (a court, a social security center, a police station, a tax center, a union headquarters, an unemployment pole, a morgue, kennels etc.). The Pantin...
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The iMac is the most widely sold computer in the world. The release of the colored, egg-shaped, transparent and user-friendly iMac computer by Apple in 1998 came as a bombshell in the computing market. Through pictures from past records, 3D animations showing computers of the future and works of contemporary artists, this film tells us with humor and originality how design has influenced the austere world of computing.