Convention @ SILVERDOCS

Schnack and his collaborators show things from essentially three different perspectives. There are the organizers and city officials, represented by the city planner tasked with putting the whole thing together; the Deputy Mayor who is handling much of the day to day overseeing, particularly the police coordination; the city's liaison with the protest groups; and finally, the city's liaison with the DNC. She, in particular, is a marvel to watch. There is also, of course, the media, represented by the Denver Post's political editor, and joining him, a cub reporter only six weeks on the political beat after transferring from education coverage. Watching her handle the trial by fire of the convention is some of the most gripping viewing of the film. Finally, there are the protesters, mostly covered by way of a pair of aging '60s radicals, a married couple who are overseeing the organization of the largest of the ongoing protests during convention week, who have dubbed their group with the rather unfortunate moniker, "Recreate '68".

Through much of the early portion of the picture, unfortunately, the protesters seem mainly to be there for comic relief after the high stress of watching everyone else tearing their hair out with planning and media coverage. The protesters are much more laid back, but by extension, disorganized, and their confusion gets played for laughs, even as we go back and see the same events unfolding back at the control center from the police perspective. It's a neat narrative trick Schnack is playing, though, because one of the most moving moments from later in the film comes when all of the protesters unite behind a group of uniformed soldiers from Iraq Vets Against the War, and with clear cut goals and singular purpose, thousands of people manage to take part in a protest that actually accomplishes something substantive. It's a triumphant and moving moment that, in the kind of real coincidence only documentary can convincingly provide, takes place just on the cusp of a golden sunset.

The other factions are not without their own humor and drama. Denver Post reporter Allison Sherry naively states on the eve of the convention that she doesn't know why everyone seems so stressed; she thinks it'll be a lot of fun. The crowd laughs, just knowing this is foreshadowing some kind of disaster, and it is: laughter turns to tears on just the second day of the Post's floor coverage. Meanwhile, among the organizers, Chantal Unfug, the Mayor's liaison to the DNC, must learn how to ride the Mayor's personal scooter in order to get around town more efficiently during that week. Not even the biggest thrills of a Hollywood summer blockbuster can compare to the nail biting you'll engage in as you watch Chantal try to successfully navigate the scooter out of her driveway.

And so it goes throughout the film, laughter mixing with high stress collapsing into higher drama as the convention itself, a mere background to all this, yet somehow still the focus of it, continues to ratchet up its own staged drama. By the time we come to Obama's final speech in front of those much-maligned columns, there are few dry eyes in the cast, whether those tears are of happiness, relief, or just simple exhaustion. Schnack's experiment in collaborative documentary is a rousing success: no matter how much footage you might have watched on television when it actually happened, these filmmakers' cameras captured the convention in an entirely new way.

Convention has no more scheduled screenings at SILVERDOCS, but it seems likely this will hit theaters at some point. We'll keep you posted.