View the Screening of “God’s Architects” at the SCHC

Jan. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- The Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation is pleased to welcome Zach Godshall as he presents his award-winning documentary, God’s Architects.  The film tells the stories of five divinely inspired builders and their enigmatic creations.  With neither funding nor blueprints, these builders dedicate their entire lives to creating architectural worlds and realms that for most of us exist only in the wilds of the imagination.  The event begins at 6:00pm on Thursday, March 11 in the historic SCH Auditorium.  Admission is free and donations are encouraged.  This program kicks off Tapestry: A Living History of Vicksburg that runs from March 11-April 5.  

A few years back, Louisiana natives Emilie Taylor and filmmaker Zack Godshall set out to document self-professed divinely inspired builders who have devoted their lives to creating some rather unusual structures. The result is the intriguing documentary God’s Architects, which profiles five of these mostly self-taught and highly passionate artists (four of whom are in the South).  Like Shelby Ravellette, in Omaha, Arkansas, who has spent the last twenty years constructing a castle to fulfill a promise to his deceased daughter or Reverend H. D. Dennis in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a ninety-two-year-old WWII vet, who transformed his wife’s small grocery store along Highway 61 into a panorama of colorful towers and archways that look like something out of Alice in Wonderland.  The documentary won Godshall the 2009 Louisiana Filmmaker of the Year award at the New Orleans Film Festival.

Zack Godshall earned an MFA in Film Directing from UCLA in 2005.  He then returned to his native south Louisiana, where he continues to live and work. With an ongoing interest in the stories and people of Louisiana, Godshall has combined his background in literature, photography, and film to produce a unique and sensitive view of his subject matter. His first feature film, Low and Behold– an Official Selection of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival – weaves fiction with non-fiction to create an unflinching yet touching story of friendship and loss in post-Katrina New Orleans. Godshall recently completed God’s Architects and he currently teaches film and screen writing at LSU in Baton Rouge while he works to produce Lord Byron, a fictional film about an aimless man in search of the good life.

For more information, please call the SCHF business office at 601-631-2997 or email info@southernculture.org.

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The Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation, a non-profit organization, maintains the Southern Cultural Heritage Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Center is a Mississippi Landmark property and is list on the National Register of Historic Places. It is formerly the St. Francis Xavier Convent and Academy and is one of the most architecturally and historically significant city blocks in downtown. The Foundation is committed to preserving the history and architecture of the Cultural Center, while offering cultural, artistic and educational programs for the community.