run time : 82 minutes
In 1919, black workers’ decades-long efforts to challenge exploitation in the Arkansas Delta culminated in the nation’s deadliest racial massacre and labor battle. It’s legacy is deep, despite being hidden for over 100 years.
“We Have Just Begun” takes its name from the secret pass-code used by a Black union of farmers and domestic workers organizing throughout the Arkansas Delta in 1919. A seven-year investigation into the historical events in Phillips County, Arkansas, the film explores the legacy of exploitation, domination, and resistance in the Delta and its ongoing cover up.
Directed by
Michael Warren Wilson
“We have Just Begun” screens after Rhythm’s of The Land” on Sept 14th at the Grand Lake Theater during the 5:30 – 8:00 p.m. session.
Michael Warren Wilson
DirectorTongo Eisen Martin
Writer
Michael Warren Wilson
Writer
Michael Warren Wilson
Producer
Tongo Eisen Martin
Producer
Joshua Asante
Composers
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Brandon Kendricks
ComposersÂ
Michael Warren Wilson is a filmmaker and artist who was born in Arkansas, graduated from Little Rock Central High and Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas) without learning about Elaine. Although his great-grandfather was a sharecropper in the Arkansas Delta in 1919, no family stories of the event exist. Wilson’s films, collaborative projects and multimedia art and initiatives have been exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Entermultimediale, Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Rotterdam Film Festival. His first feature documentary, “Silhouette City,” premiered in competition at the Miami International Film Festival, had a theatrical run, aired on the CBC, Russia Today, BBC and was featured at special screenings/panel discussions at Harvard, UCLA, UCSD, Pitzer College, UC Riverside and many other campuses. He has taught film, multimedia and art practice at Pitzer College, UC-Riverside, UC-Irvine, Otis College of Art, San Francisco Film School and Cal-Poly-Pomona. He holds an MFA from Yale School of Art.
