Canestrier, Jacques

Jacques Canestrier is a French producer, distributor, editor and painter.

He started as a television production manager for Paris Télévision and then for OCORA in the 1960s. It is with the wife of his director friend Yves Ciampi, Keiko Kishi that he discovered Japanese animation.
From his first travels, he indirectly participates in the realization of "Oum le Dauphin Blanc" by taking his director friend René Borg to Japan, where the animation of the cartoon was subcontracted.
On his side, it is also there in Japan, via his company Pictura Films, that Jacques Canestrier gets a great number of cartoons from Toei Animation, but also with the help of the companies TMS and Tatsunoko.
At first supported by the broadcaster Guy Maxence, he is however badly seen by Jacqueline Joubert and her new team of Unité Jeunesse of Antenne 2 to be able to broadcast his cartoons acquired in Japan.
Nevertheless, the first big series to be imported, "UFO Robo Grendizer" (renamed "Goldorak") was then broadcasted in an empty grid of summer 1978. In spite of the vacation period, the series was a hit in terms of ratings for the channel. It followed other successes such as Candy Candy and Captain Harlock which definitively imposed Japanese animation in the French audiovisual landscape.

He then moved away from television (leaving his place to his colleague Bruno René-Huchez of the IDDH company) to work on the video publishing market. He proposes an important collection of videos for young people to edit his films and series that were refused by the broadcasters (Galaxy Express 999, Grand Prix). He also discovered a great success due to the obvious lack of competition on the market (Disney was not yet clearly up to speed on the subject).

Jacques Canestrier retired from the world of distribution for personal reasons at the beginning of the 1980s, and redirected himself to painting.
But 40 years later, he remains in the interviews the personality who allowed the discovery of Japanese anime in France, or the trigger of what was called "the Goldorak madness".

(Source: Interview "La loi des séries")