Moving Midway

Film critic and journalist Godfrey Cheshire, now a filmmaker as well, brings us Moving Midway, a terrific and heartwarming new documentary that he’s written, directed, and produced. It’s about encroaching urban sprawl, the Southern plantation system, race, and moving a huge building from one site to another (the title Moving Midway refers to the moving of Cheshire’s relatives’ huge North Carolinian Midway home, a former plantation). I know, that description does sound kind of deadly. But this film is just the opposite…you won’t look at your watch once, and you’ll have a huge smile on your face for most of the 98-minute running time.

Originally planned to be “a family document,” as Cheshire describes it in production notes, his friends in New York, when they heard about the project, encouraged him to make “a real film.” And he obviously listened to them and did what they suggested.

As in all good documentaries, the unexpected stuff always makes for an even richer experience (however, and fortunately, no rabid racists are found to be part of the family, and the house, I mean mansion, does not fall off the truck that’s transporting it).

We’re treated to tales of ghosts, ancestors who still live in the house…as the family worries about how the ghosts are going to feel about the “move.” Chief among these relatives (and ghosts) is Great-Great Aunt Mimi who had lived at Midway her entire life (1869-1961) and ruled over it when Cheshire was a child. There’s even one ghost tale that might give you a bit of the willies.

Much of the film’s humor, on the other hand, comes from Godfrey’s mother, Elizabeth Silver, aunt to Charlie Hinton (“Pooh”) Silver, Jr., current owner of Midway with his wife, Dena. Elizabeth grew up at Midway and currently lives in Raleigh with husband Buddy Cheshire. Elizabeth’s disdain for anything Northern (“Yankee!”) is just about worth the price of admission. But one of the film’s funniest moments comes late in the film as she’s being transported to the location of the new Midway past the old location.

What gives this wonderful film its needed gravitas is the discovery and meeting of the family’s black cousins and hearing about their shared history, what the current “moving” experience means to all of them, and about all the ancestors of Midway both black and white (many seen in archival photographs or drawings). Among the slaves was Mingo, born in the early 1700s in Western Africa, who lived to a “great age” and who became a legendary figure to subsequent generations of Hintons.

The historical research for Moving Midway was supervised by Dr. Robert Hinton, currently Associate Director of Africana Studies at New York University. He believes his grandfather, Demsey Hinton, was born a slave at Midway Plantation around 1860. Godfrey Cheshire had not even met Dr. Hinton at the beginning of the project, only did so by a chance encounter, and yet Hinton would become his primary collaborator and a participant in the film.

If you haven’t already seen this film, try to catch it. I believe you’ll thank me.

                                                             Jim Baldassare