What is the film about?

Love, conflict and technology in the first-ever live opera on the blockchain.
L’amour rebelle reimagines the classic opera Carmen for the web3 age. In the original, love is described as a rebel bird, an ever-present force that we can neither tame nor escape. In l’amour rebelle, we apply the same metaphor to our pursuit of runaway technology.

What influenced it?

Georges Bizet, William Kentridge, Web3

A little background information...

Animator Leo Crane met opera singer Merav Eldan and composer Zachary Whitney in NFT online chatrooms in 2021. Concerned that art in these circles was becoming defined by fast jpgs, they set out to bring a sense of tradition and evolution to the blockchain. Inspired by classic opera, they found parallels between Carmen’s conflicted relationship with love and our own relationship with the runaway technology of web3. Leo translated the story into an animation, using traditional materials and hand-drawn, frame-by-frame techniques. Roy Joseph Butler modelled the figure of Carmen, rethinking traditional associations of gender, race, and sexuality to create a universal 21st-century figure. The visuals were set to Zach’s new electroacoustic version of Bizet’s score.

How was the film made?

L’amour rebelle reimagines Habanera from the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. The film, animated in charcoal by Leo Crane, invites you to imagine the character of the rebel bird as technology as it forges a conflicted relationship with a universal human figure, performed by Roy Joseph Butler. Mezzosoprano Merav Eldan performs the aria in a new electro-acoustic arrangement by Zachary Whitney.

The project launched with a live performance in a 360-degree projection dome featuring Eldan and players from the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Whitney. 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 (screenings and events).