Lots of good stuff going on and a few important deadlines to alert you to:

- My friends over at the Center for Social Media have been biizzzyy – they have just a released a green code for filmmakers, Code of Best Practices in Sustainable Filmmaking, to assist you in greening your productions, and a white paper on public media, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics. I need to sit down with the white paper myself, but I’m very curious to hear what kinds of thoughts they have brought together on the future of public media.

- The deadline to register for the International Documentary Challenge is approaching. The event takes place from March 5 – 9. I’ll be screening submissions again this year, so make me something awesome to watch!

- For those at Big Sky this week (I wish I were!), please let me know if you had a chance to see Dianna Dilworth’s Mellodrama. There is an interesting interview with the filmmaker over at Rhizome, an organization that I love! They are into some wonderfully cutting edge art and technology.

- A new Chris Eyre movie launches the next Native American Film and Video Festival, March 26-29. We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears, “explores the resolve and resilience of the Cherokee Nation, who resisted removal from their homelands in the Southeast in every way they knew.” Eyre has worked mostly in narrative (Smoke Signals, Skins, A Thousand Roads) but I have confidence that his documentary skills are sharp. If you are in NYC, the screening is free, just reserve your seat.

- For all of you folks who can’t wrap your brain around how documentaries make change, a story from the aftermath of Daniel Junge’s They Killed Sister Dorothy, the grand prize winner from last year’s SXSW. “Three people, including two gunmen, are in jail for her killing. But one of the ranchers suspected of ordering the murder had his conviction overturned last year and another, Regivaldo Pereira Galvao, was arrested only last month and now awaits trial. ‘The film has been very influential in the rearrest of Regivaldo,’ David Stang told Reuters at the World Social Forum.” Read the article>>

- March 13 is the deadline to apply for fellowships to attend the The Flaherty Seminar. If you haven’t been and you love docs, go!

For some reason, I’ve taken to naming my link round-ups with whatever is going on in my life. Sometimes it means something but today it doesn’t. Just thought I’d share Here’s what is cool from my inbox:

- The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose is now available on DVD. If you haven’t seen it, do. It’s about a band of quirky musicians who seem to have learned a lot about life in their decades of playing together.

- This week on P.O.V., a very important film by a wonderful filmmaker, Roger Weisberg’s Critical Condition. “Critical Condition puts a human face on the nation’s growing health care crisis by capturing the harrowing struggles of four critically ill Americans who discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, home, savings, and even their lives.”

- Byron Hurt, the maker of the wonderful Beyond Beats and Rhymes, is working on a new project about black masculinity. In anticipation of the release of his new short called Barack & Curtis, a comparison of two well-known black men (Curtis is Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent, and I presume you know who Barack is?), Hurt has been posting clips of material that didn’t make it into the short as a lead-up. Good sh*t!

- I like weird stuff like this: “V2 Cinema presents the short documentary feature BACK TO ROOM 666 (aka DE VOLTA AO QUARTO 666), starring director Wim Wenders, on www.v2cinema.com. Directed by Gustavo Spolidoro, the movie updates the scenary of Wenders’ Room 666 (1982), now with the German filmmaker as the interviewee. The video is the third of five shorts from online series Boundaries of Thought: THINK TANK(AKA Fronteiras do Pensamento: ENSAIOS VISUAIS).”

- My friends Robert and Almudena (pictured above) won an Emmy! Big hugs and congrats to you both on such a fine job. It is well-deserved. If you haven’t seen Made in L.A., now is the time.

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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.