Seamless

In his terrific new documentary Seamless, director Douglas Keeve provides a bizarre look at a contest cooked up by Vogue magazine and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to encourage the next generation of clothing designers. Although he proceeds straight-faced, Keeve seizes on some hilarious and touching incidents — one contestant’s observation that the spring season will be “kind of tropically feelingalmost like a little Jackie O-ish,” and, in stark contrast to the exertions of her celebrity-obsessed Manhattan counterparts, the lonely toil of a shy designer named Doo Ri Chung, who works in the windowless basement of her parents’ dry-cleaning shop in New Jersey. Observant and nicely edited, the film ably contrasts the supposed glamour of the fashion trade with the gritty hard work that underlies it. Keeve has traveled this way before: In 1995’s Unzipped, he grabbed an up-close view of the trials and tribulations of top New York fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Seamless, which is sponsored by the Sundance Channel, screens at 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 13, in the Denver Sneak Peek Series at Starz FilmCenter on the Auraria campus. For information, call 303-820-3456 or log on at www.denverfilm.org.