Convention (2009)

20% of critics liked it
(10 reviews)
67% of users liked it
(18 ratings)

Filmmaker A.J. Schnack offers a behind-the-scenes look at the planning and hard work that goes into staging one of America's largest public political events in this documentary. Denver, CO, hosted the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and Schnack invited a team of acclaimed documentary filmmakers… More Filmmaker A.J. Schnack offers a behind-the-scenes look at the planning and hard work that goes into staging one of America's largest public political events in this documentary. Denver, CO, hosted the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and Schnack invited a team of acclaimed documentary filmmakers -- including Steven Bognar, Daniel Junge, Laura Poitras, Julia Reichert, and Paul Taylor -- to help him capture the story going on backstage, with each filmmaker and their crew focusing on a different aspect of the event. In Convention, we follow various officials of the City of Denver, working overtime to anticipate anything that could go wrong or demand their attention; join a team of protestors demonstrating the convention with more good intentions than practical skill; look in on the press corps covering the proceedings, including the staff of The Denver Post and a young journalist who has been on the political beat for a mere six weeks; and follow the crew organizing and staging Barack Obama's much-anticipated nomination acceptance speech. Convention was an official selection at the 2009 Silverdocs Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 33 min.
Directed By: AJ Schnack
Genres: Documentary, Special Interest

In Theaters: Jun 17, 2009 Wide
Studio: IFC Films

Critic Reviews

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post
What Convention sets out to do, it does with understated candor.
Mike Hale, New York Times
Some of this is awfully pedestrian, but there are moments of both high comedy and high drama.
Kyle Smith, New York Post
Cinéma vérité? More like cinéma banalité.
Nicolas Rapold, Village Voice
The film's frustrating treatment is actually more like the local reporter who is shown struggling to stay in the loop.
Matt Pais, Metromix.com
Ooh, will mayor's special assistant Chantal Unfug learn to ride a scooter? Will protestors spend less than half their time defending their right to protest?
Ian Buckwalter, DCist
While Convention may be more traditional documentary fare in content than his last film, A.J. Schnack is not without a new trick up his sleeve: a collaborative documentary made with a group of documentarians, each with his/her own assignment.
Eric Monder, Film Journal International
Slickly produced but devoid of purpose, Convention tackles several storylines occurring at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
A tediously dull, facile and lazy documentary that fails to engage viewers intellectually. It offers too many potatoes and not nearly enough meat.
Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com
Dogged, but anti-climactic cinema vérité tribute to the increasingly irrelevant quadrennial political show.
Eric Hynes, Time Out New York
Convention plays like 11 cameras in search of drama.

Read all 10 critic reviews

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