God's Architects - winner at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival

GOD'S ARCHITECTS trailer from Zack Godshall on Vimeo.

Deep Fried Kudzu (all things good and southern) blogger, Ginger Brook just brought this documentary to my attention...Featuring the art environments of 5 amazing artists, Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain, Shelby Ravellette's Lacey Michele Castle, Kenny Hill's Garden of Salvation, Rev. H.D. Dennis' Margaret's Grocery and Floyd Banks, Jr. castle.

To learn more about it, please visit the website.

Synopsis:

God's Architects is a documentary that tells the stories of five divinely inspired artist-architects and their enigmatic creations.The film details how and why these oft-marginalized creators, with neither funding nor blueprints, construct their self-made environments.

Backstory:

In the spring of 2005, Emilie Taylor, then a graduate student at the Tulane School of Architecture, received a travel grant to research and document self-taught and visionary builders around the south. After visiting and documenting a number of builders, most of whom professed some degree of divine inspiration, Emilie shared her findings with filmmaker Zachary Godshall. Immediately attracted by Taylor's stories, drawings, and photographs, Godshall decided to visit the builders himself.

And so in November 2005, Godshall set out from south Louisiana with a camera, tripod, and microphone to interview and document the work of Floyd Banks Jr., a divinely inspired castle builder living in the east Tennessee hill country.

Three years later, Godshall completed a feature-length film that both examines and celebrates the work of Banks along with four other solitary builders who have constructed similar monuments. Beyond the builders and their work, the film functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and one's dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem.