Convention

For four days in August 2008, over 50,000 people - including 20,000 journalists, 15,000 delegates plus as many volunteers, 10,000 VIPs, and countless protestors - descended on Denver, Colorado, for the Democratic National Convention. As then-mayor John Hickenlooper challenged his staff to produce “the best convention ever,” a handful of filmmakers were on the ground, cameras rolling, with an all-access pass to capture exactly what it takes to fulfill such a daunting directive. Among them was AJ Schnack. Convention takes the audience on a whirlwind trip behind the scenes of one of the largest and most important events in not only Denver’s history but the nation’s. Schnack and his crew split up to concentrate separately on three very different yet essential branches of the convention process: the mayor’s office, The Denver Post’s corps of political journalists, and the activist group Recreate ’68 - each composed of, “in the best sense of the phrase, everyday people,” as Schnack put it at the time. “They could be your next-door neighbors. Yet here they are, tasked with the biggest event of the millennium.” The momentum of the documentary never lessens, its coverage leading from the week before the convention commences right up to the moment of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, as tears of hope stream down the faces of those for whom it is all just beginning to sink in. Convention offers an up-close and personal look at the arduous yet thrilling endeavor that was the political process in the United States of America one remarkable decade ago. (Denver International Film Festival)