Southern Culture Movie Series: Moving Midway

Moving Midway [2007, 98 min]

When New York film critic Godfrey Cheshire returns home to North Carolina in early 2004 and hears that his cousin Charlie Silver plans to uproot and move the buildings of Midway Plantation, their family’s ancestral home, an extraordinary, emotional journey begins. Charlie’s plan is a controversial one within their extended family. Some fear the move will destroy Midway. Others worry about the reaction of the plantation’s ghosts, including Miss Mary “Mimi” Hinton, Midway’s eccentric owner when Charlie and Godfrey were kids. There’s another group who may be concerned too. Charlie says he was recently visited by a man who claimed that their family has a large, previously unknown African-American branch, due to a liaison between Midway’s builder and a plantation slave. Back in New York, Cheshire fortuitously encounters Dr. Robert Hinton, an NYU professor of African-American studies who says his grandfather was born a slave at Midway. While beginning a dialogue on the meaning of Midway from their very different perspectives, Cheshire and Dr. Hinton examine how the Southern plantation, a crucial economic institution in early America, generated a powerful, bitterly contested mythology that was at the center of a string of American cultural milestones.

*Discussion facilitated by Dr. Harry Watson, Atlanta Alumni Distinguished Professor of Southern Culture in the UNC Department of History

For more info: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/esl/southern-culture-movie-series/

Southern Culture Movie Series brought to you by:

The Writing Center

International Student and Scholar Services

The Center for the Study of the American South

The Media Resources Center

The Summer School