sexuality and conflict
L'amour rebelle explores sexuality and conflict by reimagining Carmen from Georges Bizet's opera. Roy Joseph Butler plays Carmen, stripped of gender, race, place and time, leaving two competing alter egos: a universal figure and the opera's rebel bird. Their struggle leads to rebirth and a new future.
The project began when animator Leo Crane met opera singer Merav Eldan in an online chatroom about art and emerging technology in 2021. Concerned about the rapid rise of NFTs and AI, they set out to bring a sense of tradition and evolution to their online community. Working with their respective husbands, art model Roy Joseph Butler and composer Zachary Whitney, they found parallels between Carmen's conflicted relationship with sexuality and our current relationship with runaway technology.
Leo translated the story into an animation, using traditional materials and hand-drawn, frame-by-frame techniques, with Roy as the central figure. The visuals were set to Zach's new electroacoustic version of Bizet's score, with the libretto performed by Merav.
Crane’s film was then reformatted for theatrical release, premiering at the Oscar-qualifying Provincetown International Film Festival in June 2022. It has since been exhibited and screened at numerous festivals and museums around the world, from a giant billboard in New York to a six-screen installation in Paris.
