Martine Barrat
| Martine Barrat | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Oran, Algeria |
| Residence | New York City, U.S |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Photographer, video and filmmaker |
| Known for | Do or Die |
Martine Barrat is a French-Algerian photographer, actress, dancer and writer.
Barrat was born in Oran, Algeria, but raised in France. She is a Pieds-Noirs.
A dancer and actress, Martine Barrat was discovered by Ellen Stewart at an international dance festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. “LaMaMa”, as Stewart was known, then sent her a plane ticket to perform in her theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; Barrat arrived in the United States in June 1968.
Barrat began collaborating with the Human Arts Ensemble. Stewart gave the group a building, and they began video workshops for the youth of the neighborhood. Barrat traveled to Harlem to bring children to participate in the music and video workshops, beginning a lifelong dedication to the neighborhood.
Around 1971, Barrat started to work with video in the South Bronx with two gangs: the Roman Kings and the Roman Queens, as well as the president of the Ghetto Brothers. She spent all of her time for years working with the members and sharing the video equipment, creating a series of videos between 1971 and 1976. The series, called You Do The Crime, You Do The Time, debuted at Columbia and at the French Embassy in a show organized by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, through their organization CERFI. In 1978, Barrat was awarded the prize of Best Documentary Filmmaker in Milan, Italy for the film. In Italy, Channel 2 aired the film several times at prime time. In America, earlier that same year, excerpts were aired on NBC.The Whitney Museum in New York also showed the film along with Barrat's first photography of the South Bronx, which was well-attended and well-regarded by the press.
In the following years, she immersed herself in photographing the boxing world in New York, from young boys training in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, to the Bronx. The resulting work was displayed at the Consulate General of France in New York, with the book titled Do or Die. In 1993, the photographs were collected in the book Do or Die, published by Viking Penguin and prefaced by Gordon Parks and Martin Scorsese: "Patiently, painfully and with a highly discerning heart, Martine Barrat has filled our eyes with a world of young warriors eager to earn the honors of their hostile sport. ... A wistful, beauteous demeanor betrays the hardness that is already building in their hearts. ... with powerful pictures and strong words, Martine Barrat captures the spirit of young fighters who, with the other guy's blood on their gloves, return joyously to their concerns."
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Wikipedia