Once Upon a Time

I received an email from a woman today. A couple of years ago I wrote on a blog about a movie I remembered from my childhood. It was sort of an Alice In Wonderland type film, but it was different enough to have its own appeal. The name of the film is "Once Upon a Time" by Rolf Kauka. It is a German animated film, and it also goes by the title, "Der Zauberstein" and "Maria d'Oro und Bello Blue". I saw it on a station that is long extinct, which fits, because everyone associated with this movie is also long extinct. The director is dead, and the production companies and the distributor no longer exist.

From my childhood perspective, this was an awesome movie. It was successful enough to be shown on television, so in my five year old mind, it had achieved a certain small level of success. I still have no idea why we taped it, but we got the whole thing on tape. It may have been taped because it followed a movie my parents taped, or we may have taped it because the channel showed children's movies every Saturday afternoon. Whatever the reason, nobody in my family remembers. I knew it was cheap and I held no pretenses that any of my friends had seen it, so I rarely mentioned it. In fact, I mentioned it so rarely that I made myself forget about it for a long time. I grew up, and for certain parts, I wondered if I made the whole thing up. Finally, with the internet, I decided to see for myself what this movie was. The only problem was that I could not remember the title, the characters names, or any details other than one line, and that line was not distinctive enough to find any results.

I asked my mom what the title was, and she remembered. But since she told me it was "Once Upon a Time" I knew I would have a difficult time finding it. I had no idea how difficult. I turned up results under "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and a million other countries, but none were animated, and none were just plain "Once Upon a Time".

After a few years, I stumbled on other titles, and I found my beloved video for sale. The only problem was that it was in German or Italian, and it was on PAL format. That wouldn't work for me. But I was determined to not give up. About a year after that, I found it for sale on Ebay for 99 cents, in English. Of course, the auction had just ended, and some lucky person got an extremely rare video for a bargain price. Right about the same time, I found one for sale on Half.com. Unfortunately, it was $300 and that was out of my range. I was curious whether it was still there, so I just went to check, and it has either sold or they removed it. If someone bought it, they were ripped off.

These searches made me angry. I wanted more than ever to find it. So, after googling it- again- I searched through all the results. Yes, you heard me. Every single page that returned results for "Once Upon a Time". And I found it, just like I knew I would. I am a researcher for an internet radio station, and I am very good at what I do (more about that in later blogs). It was not for sale, but it was just as good. I found two copies, and both were located in public libraries. Thank goodness for public libraries. It makes perfect sense that I would find it there.

So now for the moral of the story. Support your libraries. They have this video that has had a strong impact on people who have watched it. I have never seen another video that the fans are so rabid to get a copy that they will contact complete strangers and offer to pay them to make a copy, and then give out their address to the same stranger so it can be mailed to them. The video that sold for 99 cents will one day find itself in a garage sale box. It will probably be skipped over, and the owner will decide to donate it to a thrift shop. It will most likely go unnoticed, and quite possibly be thrown away. In the library, it will live forever. Fans will rent it, or request interlibrary loans. They will make their own copies, possibly on DVD which has a longer shelf life than VHS. They will introduce it to their children as I have done with mine. In fact, the reason the woman wanted it is because their sister is pregnant, and they are making a copy to pass on to the baby someday. So again, PLEASE, support your local library. As a researcher, I have seen what is available on the internet. I can honestly say that it doesn't always offer everything you may be interested in.

And as a final note: if you are a fan and you track this down, RETURN IT! I would be lying if I said I didn't feel tempted to keep it all for myself. But it was just as easy to make my own copy. If you don't have 2 VCR's, buy another to tape it. You'll spend $20, and if you wouldn't spend that on the movie, you don't deserve a copy. Let others enjoy it too.