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'Unconvention' and the RNC 8

Whenever it opens, you must see Unconvention, the locally-made documentary about protests outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last year. (It screened Sunday as part of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.)

I covered the events of that week for MN Indy, yet hadn't witnessed most of what's in the film, which outlines a long, slow, but seemingly planned and certain overreaction by police and paramilitaries to a small group of vandals--bringing the full force of tear gas and arrest down on legal marchers, bystanders, and unlucky reporters. The documentary tells this story without any narration or framing devices outside of a few subtitles.

I have to add that I was wary: I don't agree with director Chris Strouth, a friend of mine, that the purpose of political protest, avowed or subconscious, is to persuade the people being protested. (He expressed this ideas last week on MPR.) Something similar was pointed out by an audience member at the Q&A after the screening, but not before the exchange degenerated into shouting and ranting from the floor--had the hecklers never encountered a public speaker with whom they disagree?

The point to make here is that these shouters weren't responding to the film, but to the director's remarks: At no point does Strouth put anyone onscreen discussing the efficacy of protest. The fact that people of differing views respond so strongly and approvingly to Unconvention is a sign of its beauty. At an hour and a half, with footage from a slew of different DIY video journalists (including The Uptake), the movie feels raw, unprocessed, and complex--with an eye toward every possible irony. We put together the whole in our minds, and make them up while we're doing it.

Unconvention is also just a starting point, and makes no claim to be the last word. Among the things striking me that week that aren't onscreen was just how deserted downtown St. Paul was (partly, I imagine, as a result of Labor Day Weekend, partly because citizens were truly led to believe that the great bomb-throwing conspiracy was descending, partly by elaborate security design). I also think any historian of the moment should point out that the confrontations with police on Monday involved a break-away protest from the much larger and apparently uncinematic legal one--and discussions of efficacy should make that distinction. Yet the movie wasn't about that conversation, which should come later. Maybe it should come tonight:

There is a public meeting at Coffman Memorial Union tonight titled Defend the RNC 8! The Struggle for Justice after the RNC (7:00 p.m., Room 324). The "RNC 8" are the activists who were initially charged with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism under the Minnesota version of the Patriot Act. Though the terrorism charges were dropped recently, each still faces a possible five years in prison. It's a chance to hear them tell their story.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at April 29, 2009 1:14 PM

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