Who among us can resist anything with the words “ultimate” and “lesbian” in it? On January 31, Wolfe Video will release The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival, a DVD featuring ten favorites from the film festival circuit.

In a break from lesbian short film tradition, not all of these selections are comedies; many of them have comic elements, but only two strictly fit the genre. Half of the films deal with family relations, and while all of them feature lesbian protagonists, only a few of these characters interact on screen with a love interest. More strikingly, only one of the ten films has a sex scene. Mostly these films are about lesbians and important moments in their lives, where being a lesbian isn't alone the most salient aspect.

First up is the glossiest, funniest of the bunch and the only Australian contribution in an otherwise All-American field: Blow. (No, not that kind of blow. Or that kind.) Here we have a high school kid who wakes up each morning and sneezes—according to her mom, exactly nine times. Becky resigns herself to the melodramatic and surly teenage idea that she's allergic to life—that is, until she finds a girl-shaped cure for what ails her. The short (7 minutes) coming-out tale from director Marie Craven charms without being overbearingly cute.

The Black Plum (15 minutes), directed by Meredyth Wilson, is a fairy tale that follows a motherless young tomboy on a fantastical adventure that leads her to glimpses of her possible future. The symbolism is doled out with a heavy hand, but the story is told with a certain restraint and a delightful dose of magical realism. And, for what it's worth, this film arguably has the best titles in the lot: sinewy storybook vines that drape from the text like wisteria.

Frozen Smile (7 minutes) is the latest from Silas Howard, co-director/star of the critically lauded By Hook or By Crook (2001) and former and founding member of dyke punk band
Tribe 8. This film offers a humorous peek into the lives of three women: a young faux-hawked dyke, her disapproving straight-laced mom, and her drag-fab grandmother/ally. The trio pays a graveside visit to the recently departed grandpa, a grumpy man with a perma-grin courtesy of his advanced Parkinson's disease. Howard says that several of her own relatives provided inspiration for much of this delightful film's quirkiness: “My grandmother's car only worked in one gear, reverse. So she'd drive backwards to the store when she had to pick up her medicine.” There was even a family headstone mishap similar to one depicted in the film: “That's how it goes if you can't afford better. The funeral home actually gave out ice scrapers with their name on it as souvenirs.” Revel in the inanity (flowers made out of soap?), wince at the all-too-familiar motherly jabs, and keep an eye out for a lesbian icon who makes a brief, non-speaking appearance.

Continuing with the dead relative theme, Half Laughing is a 12-minute window on the life of a buzzcut lesbian who goes home for a funeral. Director Michelle Ehlen stars as said dyke, who has to suffer her homophobic mother's equal disdain for her daughter's “lifestyle” and hairstyle. Here the maternal disapproval is more painful than humorous, and our hero complies too long with the charade her mom would have her enact, long enough to elicit sympathy as well as frustration from the viewer. The film concludes with the standard all-characters-are-fictional disclaimer, but the palpable feeling of rejection running through the film makes you wonder.

Third in the deceased patriarch series is Saint Henry, a 19-minute film directed by
Abigail Severance. Henry is a 17-year-old tomboy with a pretty boy sidekick called Twiggy, who indulges Henry in her hobby of imagining random passersby to be the father she never met. Once the pair kicks it up a notch and embarks on an active search for the man, Henry releases a surprisingly violent aggression as she tries to live out her fantasized notion of a masculine identity. Soon the teenagers find themselves in the midst of something neither foresaw. When asked about the recurrence of sailors, drifters, cowboys and bandits in her films, Severance says she's drawn to the very American tradition of hobo stories and campfire tales, and how people define themselves through such vehicles. In Saint Henry she succeeds at evoking a spiritualism she likens to bluegrass music. Further inspiration for her: “I spend a lot of time reading fairy tales,” she says, “and that gets woven into what I'm writing.”

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