Over the 2009-'10 academic year, Hugh Pocock led a class called the Baltimore Food Ecology Documentary (BFED) at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Pocock, a MICA foundation faculty member in general fine arts and video, has long held an interest in the natural world and human interactions with it--his 2009 My Food My Poop exhibition abstracted his energy consumption, measured in the difference in mass between what he consumed and what he eliminated as waste ("What Crap," Art, Aug. 12, 2009)--and he has taught courses in sustainability at MICA, such as the 2010 Summer Urban Farming course (baltimoreurbanfarming.blogspot.com). The BFED course was a partnership between Pocock and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which was aimed at "supporting a course that produced a video and also an experience for students to be immersed in the food system of Baltimore," Pocock says by phone.

The yearlong course demanded that the nine MICA students enrolled spent the first semester researching how food gets to the plate in Baltimore and the complex issues surrounding that journey--food production, food distribution, the dietary problems resulting from food iniquities--and the second semester producing a documentary video. "It was a content-based course that then drove the technical skills to communicate what they know into a digestible, time-based video," Pocock says.

The result, the half-hour "Baltimore Food Ecology Documentary," is a Baltimore-specific exploration of the ongoing food discussions that have creeped into the American culture and consciousness over the past decade. The students interviewed local foodies--such as John Shields, the Gertrude's chef and lay regional food expert; Southwest Baltimore food activist Joyce Smith; and Greg Strella of the Baltimore Public Schools' Great Kids Farm--visited commercial food and seafood processing/distribution hubs in Jessup, explored how and what reaches corner stores in neighborhoods with no easily accessible large supermarkets, and, in general, delivered an incisive, well-researched, and persuasively argued look at where the food Baltimoreans eat comes from.

City Paper caught up with Pocock by phone to talk about its production and community engagement.

City Paper: Were the students coming into the class already interested in the subject matter?

Hugh Pocock: Yes. It was advertised as a class that would focus on local food issues, so the students who came in were really charged to learn more. One of the nice things about teaching a thematically based class is that students really want to learn. And they were a fantastic group of students that then really drove the documentary. They took over the voice of the documentary, the viewpoint. They took over the story-making aspect of it. And they also then coordinated the shooting and the editing process.

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