This Thursday, October 1, CONVENTION will be the opening night film at the Camden International Film Festival in Camden, Maine. Previewing that screening, the Portland Phoenix’ Christopher Gray interviews director AJ Schnack and has some very nice things to say about the film:
Convention, the opening-night feature at the fifth annual Camden International Film Festival, is a logistical triumph that chronicles a logistical triumph. AJ Schnack, the director of the Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son and lone writer at the leading documentary-industry blog All These Wonderful Things, organized a group of nine filmmakers to capture the breadth of the August 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. Collectively, they shot 90 hours of footage in the days before and during the event, which Schnack (who directed, produced, and edited the film, along with filming some of it) whittled down to a breathless, thrilling 95 minutes.
The film comes to Maine (the October 1 screening at the Camden Opera House is a New England premiere) at an awkward moment. Culminating in Barack Obama’s stirring acceptance speech at Invesco Field and concerned with the organizational chaos of the convention at the ground level, Convention summons up feelings of optimism and patriotism that are in short supply at the moment, as scaremongering and partisanship have reclaimed the national stage.
Schnack’s film, though, transcends worries about the timeliness of its subject matter. Focusing on a disparate band of Denver citizens with varying roles — figures from the mayor’s office, a green reporter at the Denver Post, a life-long political activist — Schnack twists the chaos of an unpredictable four days in Denver into a brilliantly edited, eloquent feat of choreography. Schnack and his co-producer/editor Nathan Truesdell will be in Camden on October 1 to speak after the 7 pm show.
