The Power Plant

You are invited to this season’s Cross Circuits with film scholar Michael Baker, who will respond to Sharon Lockhart’s Fogo through the history and practice of documentary film.

Baker is co-editor of Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada, which examines the NFB’s pioneering documentary program and its work on Fogo Island. Drawing on this history, Baker will consider Lockhart’s long-term engagement with the people and landscape of Fogo Island, exploring questions of place, representation, participation, and the evolving relationship between filmmaker, artist, and subject.

Michael Baker is Professor of Film Studies in the Honours Bachelor of Film & Television program and Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design at Sheridan College. He specializes in documentary film and video, music and the moving image, and film history. He holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University and is author of numerous book chapters and journal articles on a range of subjects including documentary, popular music and film, and new media.

Prof. Baker is co-editor, with Tom Waugh and Ezra Winton, of Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada (McGill-Queen’s, 2010) and, with co-editor Jessica Mulvogue, the recently released collection The Interactive Documentary in Canada (McGill-Queen’s, 2024). He is President of the Film & Media Studies Association of Canada which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.