I made a quick trip out to the Los Angeles Film Festival to root for the Austin filmmakers premiering their work, Spencer Parsons’ I’LL COME RUNNING and TRINIDAD by PJ Raval and Jay Hodges. Best of luck to them both in their respective competitions as the fest gets closer to announcing the winners. In the meantime, lots of goodies in my inbox.

- Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars is now available for download on iTunes. If you haven’t caught the film and are inclined to watch on your computer or mobile device, I highly recommend the film. It is the story of a wonderful band of musicians sprung from a refugee camp. Their music is political, emotional and a heck of a lot of fun.

- Independent Lens held a King Corn video mash-up contest and the winner is… Kylee Darcy for her animated mash-up called Corn Takes Over the World. You can watch it and the runners up at IL’s Filmocracy.

- The wonderful POV maven Yance Ford alerted me to a new and first-ever gay film fest starting up in Russia. Side-by-Side will take place in October in St. Petersburg. I’m sure it would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and if you have an appropriatly themed film, you just might help make history in that country! Deadline for submissions is coming up on July 2.

- And lastly, for my DC friends or those traveling to DC in the near future, the Hirshorn, a wonderful museum on the National Mall, has a new realist cinema exhibition, “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image.” It runs until September 7.