Distribution of short films has proven a stumbling block for years, as has the distribution of documentary films. Taken together, short docs suffer a double whammy.

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is working to correct that with its exceptional new DVD anthology 7 Complete Documentary Shorts. Here are seven alternately hilarious and heartbreaking shorts, from Mira Nair's Laughing Club of India, which looks into a laughter-as-catharsis salon in Bombay, to Roger Weisberg and Murray Nossel's Why Can't We Be a Family Again?, an unsettling look at two young boys who attempt to reunite with their mother 10 years after she left them due to her drug addiction.

But my fave was undoubtedly Eva Saks' Family Values, the profile of one very sweet suburban lesbian couple who live in Philly. The duo describe, with unbelievable nonchalance, their small business, which involves getting paid to clean up bloody crime scenes. In a completely unfazed tone, they discuss picking up bits of brain, scrubbing blood off a bath tub and how much damage stomach acid can do to floor boards.

» Matthew Hays