Elephants Dream is a surreal animated short film that takes viewers into a strange mechanical world where reality, imagination and technology seem to merge.

The story follows two characters, Emo and Proog, as they travel through an enormous and mysterious machine filled with bizarre rooms, mechanisms and creatures. Proog appears convinced that he understands the world around them, while Emo increasingly begins to question both their surroundings and his companion’s explanations.

But the story is only part of what makes Elephants Dream remarkable.

Released in 2006, the film was created by the Blender Foundation as the world’s first major “open movie” project. The production was made primarily using Blender and other open-source software, demonstrating that professional-quality 3D animation could be produced without the proprietary tools traditionally associated with large animation studios.

Even more unusually, the filmmakers released the finished movie and its production files under a Creative Commons license. The project allowed artists, developers and filmmakers around the world to study, modify and build upon the work.

Elephants Dream therefore became more than an experimental animated film. It was also a demonstration of a radically different way of creating and sharing digital culture.

Why you’ve GOTTA.WATCH it?

Elephants Dream is a strange little film — and an important one.

In just over ten minutes, you can watch a piece of animation history: an ambitious experiment that helped demonstrate what open-source creators could accomplish when the tools and even the building blocks of a film were opened to everyone.