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The Owls, (an acronym for older, wiser lesbians), is what you might call an experimental thriller, the product of an all-star group of lesbian film icons working as The Film Collaborative. Guinevere Turner, (Itty Bitty Titty Committee, The L Word) Skyler Cooper, V.S. Brodie, (Go Fish) star, alongside writer/producer Cheryl Dunye (famous for 1996 indie sensation The Watermelon Woman).

With several co-producers and producers, there are many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, and many of the main creatives share roles, making good on the "collaborative" title. As such, it's a multi-layered, unique and thoroughly original project – part queer film criticism and part tense, enjoyable fiction.

The main storyline concerns the lives of four friends (though "frenemy" might be a more apt description), all washouts from the 1990s riot grrl/queer activist era. They are, ostensibly older, wiser lesbians (hence the title), though none of them can seem to get over...

Julianne Moore. Natalie Portman. Annette Bening. A few years ago, no one would have dreamed that such big, bankable names would be involved in pushing lesbian-inclusive cinema to the major studio mainstream, perhaps even to the promised land of the Oscars. But here we are at the end of 2010, and the future has never looked brighter.

With one truly breakout film, The Kids Are All Right, and high-profile projects including The Runaways, Black Swan, and the Millennium Trilogy, it seems that that queer female lead characters have finally made it into the cinematic forefront. Perhaps it's only a toehold, but it's a welcome trend, considering big-screen lesbians have most typically been portrayed as serial killers (Monster, Basic Instinct) or minor characters.

The lesbian movies are all right

For years, the lesbian movie-watching community has been waiting for "Dykeback Mountain" — that is, our own mainstream breakout in the vein of 2005's cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain.

Lino Brocka‘s Macho Dancer (top); Deak Evgenikos, The Owls (middle); Dean Cain, Andrew Keegan, The Broken Hearts Club (bottom) Monday at Outfest 2010: Cheryl Dunye‘s The Owls is described as a mix of narrative thriller and documentary, featuring a quartet of middle-aged lesbians (Dunye among them) whose lives take a turn for the tragic when they befriend a much younger woman (Deak Evgenikos) who couldn’t care less about older trailblazers. "OWLs," the Outfest site explains, is an acronym for "Old Wise Lesbians." Cheryl Dunye, by the way, is the director of the 1986 cult classic The Watermelon Woman. Featuring Ben Weber, Dean Cain, Timothy Olyphant, Zach Braff, Matt McGrath, and Andrew Keegan, Greg Berlanti‘s 2000 romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Club is set in West Hollywood, a place where boys play with both baseballs and with one another. Also in the Broken Hearts Club cast: Jennifer Coolidge, Justin Theroux,...