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Moving Midway
Directed by Godfrey Cheshire 2008, 98 minutes, U.S.A. First Run Features Documentary filmmakers rarely know if and when it"s appropriate to insert themselves into their own projects, but in his superbly entertaining and tough-minded directorial debut, New York-based film critic Godfrey Cheshire proves he"s certainly seen and written about enough docs (notably those of Ross McElwee, who serves as a consulting producer) to recognize that his onscreen self is an essential role. Turning his camera on Midway Plantation, a centuries-old estate in rural North Carolina that has been in his family for generations, Cheshire introduces us to his cousin Charlie "Pooh" Silver and a Fitzcarraldo-esque plan to literally pick up the ancestral home and move it to a quieter locale, away from the highway, strip malls and real-estate developers now invading its space. Moving Midway is not another tired dysfunctional family memoir, however, nor is it just the story of an old building to be saved-but as an essay on the troubled legacy of American history itself, it"s inspiring and complex and still warmly nostalgic without guilt. |
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