It’s hard not to be impressed by the Millau Viaduct that’s down the road from where I live in France.
Read more at Design Observer.
Tallest bridge in the world
Gainsbourg’s songs selling Guerlain, Dior perfumes…
The work of Serge Gainsbourg, the large-nosed, Gitanes-smoking French icon whose jazzy, bohemian songs exemplified a sexually liberated France of the 1960s and 1970s, is enjoying a resurgence in the most unlikely of places — perfume ads.
Read the rest at Reuters.
Royal wedding in Monaco
Prince Albert II of Monaco and his bride-to-be Charlene Wittstock say in an interview published in France they’re looking to become parents soon after they tie the knot next month.
Read more at GreenwichTime.
Commune de Paris, 1871
Just way too cool. Commune de Paris shop and blog. Fabulous items created from artists’ designs. Don’t know about the Commune?
A little girl, a train ticket and a Belgian museum
Built by the same firm that renovated the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the Red Star Line Museum will open in Belgium in 2013. All told, the train had transported 2.6 million people through Europe on their way to the United States–Antwerp was typically the last stop before America. Passengers on the line, which ran from 1873 to 1934, included Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin, Golda Meir and Arthur Murray.
Read the rest at Forbes and visit the Red Star Line Museum site.
French chocolate coffee table
We just loved this crafter’s French chocolate coffee table! See how she did it at Red Hen Home.
Cartooning for Peace
Thought up by the French cartoonist Plantu, Cartooning for Peace is an initiative born on 16 October 2006 at UN headquarters in New York. A two-day conference organised by Kofi Annan, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, brought together the twelve best-known political cartoonists in the world for “unlearning intolerance”.
Cartooning for Peace is based in Geneva. Don’t miss the current outdoor exhibit in Geneva till July 10: Geneva Lunch.
Surrealist photog Claude Cahun exhibit at Jeu de Paume
Female. Lesbian. Jewish. Born in the French provincial city of Nantes. Working with Surrealist motifs which were barely acknowledged as such by the Surrealists, who – for all their talk of revolt – regarded women as little more than exotic furniture.
Learn more and find a link to the exhibit info at Strange Flowers.
Quiz: Are You a Francophile?
Take this quiz to discover just how deeply you love the country and its people.
You wear:
a. an “I love Paris” T-shirt
b. a sweater tied around your neck
c. a permanent scowl
Take the quiz at The Paris Blog. Image via Polyvore. Check out the rest of her funky fashion combos!
“Le Chat du Rabbin”
Just out, an animated feature film by Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux, based on Sfar’s graphic novel of the same name. Sfar also directed the fabulous and fantastical Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque).
Buy The Rabbi’s Cat at the Francophilia Amazon store!
Emma Moureaux: a French architect in Tokyo
Emmanuelle Moureaux does amazing things with color, making it look as if someone carrying architect’s blueprints rounded a corner and crashed into someone carrying Pantone swatches, creating a Reese’s-Peanut-Butter-Cup-like design style. The Sugamo Shinkin bank design [above] features what Moureaux calls a “Rainbow mille-feuille,” in addition to shafts of natural light encapsulated in glass…
Read the rest at Core77.
“Develop your ear” with Yabla French ! [sponsored post]
!["Develop your ear" with Yabla French ! [sponsored post]](http://francophilia.com/gazette/wp-content/uploads/Yabla_french_bubbles.png)
Do you still have trouble understanding native French speakers?
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Yabla French helps you do exactly that. Authentic videos featuring 100% native speakers immerse you in the real language, spoken by real people. Bilingual captions and interactive controls let you learn at your own speed.
Yabla French videos include music, travel, drama, interviews and more. The best part about watching Yabla? It’s fun!
Erotic comics – BD érotiques (NSFW)
Interested in bande dessinée and erotica? The French are very good at both, the former being a revered art form, the latter a fundamental element of their collective consciousness… Check out BDerotique, a blog devoted entirely to the subject of erotic comics.
NOTE: The images on this blog can be very graphic, so attention ! NSFW
“Immersive French” application for iOS
Wattanasoft, a leading provider of iOS language-learning apps, today is pleased to announce Immersive French for the iPad and iPhone. Immersive French provides the user with a full multimedia learning experience by associating pictures with spoken words and sentences.
Details at prMac.com.
Kubrick’s unfinished movie “Napoleon”
Today, publisher Taschen releases Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made — an equally epic tome about the project that never happened, making Kubrick’s ambitious work on Napoleon available to the world for the first time as 10 books that live inside one giant volume.
Read the rest at Brain Pickings. Buy the book at the Francophilia Amazon store.