Zima Blue: A Masterpiece from the Future

 Who made Zima Blue?

- The short film was produced by Cara Spiller, a British producer that specializes in animation. She was nominated for one Academy Award, and three Grammys.

- The director of Zima Blue is Robert Valley, a Canadian animator that specializes in visual graphic design.  He started by making his own commercials, and then in 1997 he made his own company called Maverix Studios. Only a few years later he returned to freelance, and started on his short story journey.

What does Zima Blue say about society and the future?

    When watching Zima Blue, it forces us to ask the question: what will happen to us if we develop too much? Like Zima, things around us will lose value. Living for infinity makes real life issues have less value, less weight then they would otherwise. We won’t experience pain the same way, which means we won’t appreciate love. And what is life without love? Are we even human without it?

    In his search for the truth—the entire purpose of his art—he found the only way to gain back his humanity was to bring him back to his essence, making him hardly a human at all. 

    Zima chose to strip away his exterior as well as his forward thinking, bringing him back to his original self: a pool cleaner. He decided to dive into a pool of Zima Blue—the first thing he ever saw, the origin of himself—and become what he once was: a simple robot. He unmade himself to become true again, so he could finally appreciate his surroundings once more. So he could return to the simple things, the truth.

    

    He realized that he must unmake himself to become true and real once more. What we can learn from this is that our societal goals will lead to our eventual downfall. We want to continue to become more and more virtual and technologically advanced, but in doing so, we will lose a vital piece of ourselves.

    In his futuristic world, Zima realized none of that was worth having because he became detached from the world and from what was most important to him. He would rather become “lesser” than remain so detached, which is a lesson that the world needs to learn if we want to keep our true humanity.