Culture For The Non-Cultured

Yesterday, I saw the documentary, Moving Midway at the IFC Center, a fab movie theater right here on 6th Avenue and 4th Street.

The movie centers around Midway, a plantation in North Carolina built in the 1800s.  In recent times, the land immediately surrounding the large home had been developed into strip malls, fast-food joints, and roaring highways.  So, the eldest son who had inherited the mansion that formed the center of the plantation decided to preserve the integrity of the home by purchasing a large plot of land nearby, picking up the entire house on steel beams, and moving it by truck to the new land.

As word about the plantation’s move gets out, previously unknown family members make themselves known — African American family members who were descendants of both Midways slaveowners and slaves. In this way, the movie is a thoughtful meditation on race at a micro-level through a look at this one family’s history.  

It also offers a macro-level analysis of racial stereotypes with a history of the slave trade and American attitude towards race as reflected in movies and literature.  

There’s humor here, too, and warmth and hope for the future.  There’s a serious discussion of Midway’s matriarch haunting Midway and throwing plates when angered, and a grandmother who, upon hearing that a new quilt was 100 years old and bought from Pennsylvania, declares “damn Yankee quilt.”

And there’s hope for the future when the descendants of the slaveowners and the descendants of slaves embrace and joke and throw a party together on the newly preserved, newly renovated Midway plantation.