Lafayette-area filmmakers Zack Godshall and Conni Castille have done us proud again, bringing home top prizes at the 23rd Annual New Orleans Film Festival under way this week in, well, in New Orleans.
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Lafayette-area filmmakers Zack Godshall and Conni Castille have done us proud again, bringing home top prizes at the 23rd Annual New Orleans Film Festival under way this week in, well, in New Orleans.
Godshall's film What Happens When Robert Leaves the Room won the Louisiana Short Award. The film stars Robert Longstreet as a manic playwright who peels back the soft veneer of his craft for a pair of unfortunate young actresses. Godshall's previous films, Lord Byron and God's Architects, have been lauded by critics from the Sundance Film Festival to The New York Times. Godshall is the filmmaker-in-residence at LSU.
Castille, a Breaux Bridge filmmaker who works independently and via the Moving Image Arts program at UL Lafayette, took home the Louisiana Feature Award for T-Galop: A Louisiana Horse Story.
Written, directed and produced by Castille, T-Galop traces the history of equine culture in Louisiana from colonial times through the modern era, emphasizing the culture's deep roots within the Cajun and Creole communities. The film documents such aspects of equine culture as bush tracks, zydeco cowboys and the Mardi Gras courir.
Castille is no stranger to either the NOLA Film Fest or awards. Her 2009 documentary Raised on Rice and Gravy, produced with Allison Bohl, her longtime partner at the UL, won the Documentary Short Award at the festival. The team's 2007 doc, I Always Do My Collars First, was a Louisiana Filmmaker of the Year winner.
For more on the New Orleans Film Festival, click here.