Lots of filmmakers, but especially documentarians, split their time between commercial gigs that keep the lights on and more personal works. Mary Lambert, whose ladies-of-the-U.S. Senate doc 14 Women had its world premiere last night at SILVERDOCS, is no different. Her resume includes the 1989 Stephen King adaptation Pet Sematary, some TV and direct-to-video stuff with awesome titles like My Stepson, My Lover and and Halloween II: Kalabar’s Revenge, plus music videos for the likes of Janet Jackson, Sting, and Madonna. (That stigmata-riffic, interracial-sexy "Like a Prayer" video that had the Falwellites so upset back in 1989? That was Lambert’s. She’s got some game.)

As for the personal stuff? While, it’s fair to assume that few subjects are dearer to Lambert than the under-representation of women in the legislative branch — her sister is Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). The election of Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) last fall put an unprecedented 16 women in the Senate, but 14 Women is focused on the 109th Congress, hence its name. Every aspect of Lambert’s film, from Annette Benning’s narration to Bill (The Matrix) Pope’s cinematography, bespeaks an embarrassment of riches: Besides what appears to have been plenty of bankroll, Lambert had as close to unfettered access to these politicians as anyone wielding a camera is likely to get, including significant face-time with every one of the 109th’s female senators. Sure enough, the result is a polished, absorbing film that ought to be shown in high-school civics classes everywhere.

You won’t find the skin-under-the-fingernails minutiae of political warfare that distinguishes docs like The War Room here, but that isn’t really the point. 14 Women is deliberately nonpartisan, granting as much screen time to Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as she does to Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Lambert can’t help the fact that nine of the 14 Women of the 109th are Democrats, but the film’s only overtly political content comes in the clips from the Senators’ speeches. Meanwhile, the Senate’s longest serving woman, the four-term Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) speaks with eloquence and warmth about her role in welcoming newly-elected women to this boys’ club, and about her efforts to maintain a kind of unofficial caucus for this minority (Mikulski was one of only two women in the Senate when she arrived in 1987).

The notion that womanhood innately brings with it attributes conducive to responsible governance — because women are supposedly less competitive than men, better listeners, more willing to compromise, better multitaskers, etc., etc. — comes only from the mouths of the classroom full of young girls whose interviews punctuate the doc’s various chapters. (They’re a bit hazy on how Senators get their jobs and what it is they actually do, suggesting that they’d be an ideal audience for this film.) Whether you believe those generalizations or not, the notion that the gender that comprises roughly half the country ought to have better than 16 percent representation in its senior legislative body is a no-brainer. So is the decision to seek out this film -- hopefully it will find a wider audience than its single screening at SILVERDOCS.