Les Conquérants (lost original dub of partially found French animated series; 1993)

Title screen on the Brazilian VHS transfer.

Status: Found (Brazilian dub); Lost (French dub); Partially found (original episodes)

Les Conquérants ("The Conquerors") is a French animated series that was worked on as late as 1993. It seems either 6 or 7 episodes were in production.

No official trace of its existence has been listed in any official records. The cartoon is barely even mentioned in the filmography of any of the listed staff members.

However, strangely, it has been distributed and dubbed in Portuguese in Brazil on a VHS under the title of As Aventuras de Frank e Cia ("The Adventures of Frank & co"), where the episodes were cut together to make one movie. The tape was produced by Lloyds Home Video. The existence of Les Conquérants was found out in recent years thanks to the discovery of this VHS.

The animation studio that worked on the cartoon is credited as SAVEC, of which very little trace of its existence still persists.

It is still unknown why the cartoon never got distributed, screened or aired in its native France.

However, further research seems to indicate that further footage of the series is still lost.

Premise

The translated text from the Lloys VHS describes the plot as:

"Every year, Franck, Anne and Julia, together with their parents Jacques and Marie and their dog Cartoon, go on vacation aboard "LE CONQUÉRANT", a 30-foot sailboat. This year, however, their vacation won't be exactly the same. Franck invited his Indian friend Satya to accompany them on this adventure. Thanks to the young man, our friends will learn to look at things from a different perspective and fully appreciate the life they lead and the love of their parents. They will return from this trip more mature and self-assured, and will never forget this summer, during which they were "The Conquerors".

From the visible footage, the characters are uncolored in black and white, drawn in rough pencil in a manner close to a pencil test. However, the backgrounds are painted and there is music.

It's been assumed from this that Les Conquérants had been cancelled and scrapped, but the rough animation cut was repurposed for an exclusive Brazilian distribution. However, at least one former animator said that the black-and-white pencil design was a deliberate artistic choice.

Staff

The opening and closing credits of the VHS list several names and companies. Very few of those people have mentioned Les Conquérants in their resume.

Original screenplay and dialogues: Claude Cobast
Adaptation and direction: Michel Gauthier
Original music: Bruno Bontempelli
Storyboards and layouts: Nadia Dicks, Guy Quelquejeu, Josette Zagar
Backgrounds: Marisa Musy
Animation: Josette Zagar, Véronique Madelenat, Jean Noël Manthe, Véronique Denoyelle
Animation assistants: Sophie Rivière, Zick, Nadia Dicks, Pierre Ralli
Inbetweeners: Lionel Allaix, Claude Sauvion
Executive producer: Marie Pierre Journet
Gouache art: Franck Miyet, Françoise Gillot, Marie Agnès Bey, Dominique Rimbert, Brigitte Pardon, Lionel Robe
Intertitles: Francis Pronier
Laboratories: Neyrac Films
Sound effects: Philippe Penot
Voice acting: Karina Films
Sound editing and mixing: Patrick Larue
Image editing: Bertrand Manzano
Assistant director: Pascal Cheve
Production director: Maryvonne Perrichot
Animation studio: Savec

Lost French dub

In the untouched French credits, dubbing/post-production audio company called Karina Films is mentioned. This strongly implies that an original French dub was made, even though no voice actors are listed.

An archive of Karina Films page has it state that they worked on the dub of Les Conquérants, specifying that it was 7 episodes of 26 minutes.

However, no trace of the original French dub is known of to this day.

Lost possible extra content

Marisa Musy, the background artist, mentions in a 2007 blog post that she did work for six animated shorts of Les Conquérants directed by Michel Gauthier.

Alongside Karina Films citing 7 episodes of 26 minutes, this would indicate that 182 minutes of footage would have been made, aka over 3 hours.

However, the Brazilian Lloyds VHS's content only features 78 minutes of video. Even if taking into account the removal of opening and ending credits for each short/episode, this implies that several content has been cut to fit into a tape.

This extra content, if confirmed to be existent, is still lost to this day.

Gallery

VHS transfer of the cartoon, dubbed in Portuguese.

The Brazilian VHS release containing the only known available release of Les Conquérants, under the title As Aventuras de Frank e Cia.

Trivia

The stylized character designs are reminiscent of the ones from the Papyrus animated series from 1997. Coincidentally, both shows share the same director (Michel Gauthier), some animators (Guy Quelquejeu and Nadia Dicks) and the dubbing studio (Karina Films).
The Lloyds VHS claims that the cartoon is a feature that was produced for World Children's Day and a success in over 100 countries. The World Children's Day connection is tenuous, but this "success" claim is extremely doubtful, considering its obscurity. It is to be known, though, that some releases of cartoons in Brazil would sometimes include such fabricated claims to make the show look more prestigious.

External links