A method for rendering an electronic document (ED) includes: receiving a request to render the ED; initiating, by a main process thread, generation of a main display list (DL) for the ED; identifying, during generation of the main DL, a first self-contained graphical structure (SCGS) within the ED; generating, by the main process thread, a first auxiliary DL for the first SCGS; inserting a reference to the first auxiliary DL into the main DL; initiating, after completion of the first auxiliary DL, rasterization of the first auxiliary DL by a first rasterization thread; resuming, by the main process thread and during rasterization of the first auxiliary DL, generation of the main DL; and rasterizing, after completion of the main DL, the main DL based on a first pixmap generated by rasterization of the first auxiliary DL.