Screening: We Have Just Begun with Live Narration and Soundtrack

• Friday, September 19
• 4:00 PM
• Humanities Quadrangle L02
• 320 York Street
• MAP
• FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Experience We Have Just Begun, Michael Warren Wilson’s acclaimed film exploring the hidden history and enduring legacy of the 1919 Elaine Riot, Massacre, and Dispossession. For over a century, the deadliest racial or labor conflict in American history has been obscured, but this groundbreaking film, the result of seven years of investigation, brings its brutal continuity from before 1919 to the present into sharp focus.

This special screening offers a unique, immersive experience: live narration by San Francisco Poet Laureate and 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient Tongo Eisen-Martin, alongside live musical accompaniment by the film’s composer, Joshua Asante. Both artists will blend rehearsed sequences with improvisation, creating a dynamic and responsive performance that draws from an extensive archive of testimonies and evidence. Don’t miss this powerful, multi-sensory journey into a crucial, often-denied chapter of American history.

Joshua Asante is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores identity and possibility through an Afrofuturist lens. His ethereal visual practice blends photography, graphic design, painting, and sound, and he has collaborated with university art and creative writing departments, mentored adult learners, and led community and school-based projects with adolescents. As a musician and composer, Asante describes his sound as “astral soul”—a fusion of electronic and soul music shaped by diverse influences. He released two singles in 2021, followed by the field-recorded collection I Don’t Act Like I Used To in 2022, his debut full-length album All The Names Of God At Once in 2023, and a second retrospective of field recordings in 2025 titled It’s All True But I Made It Up. He is also the keyboardist for the Shreveport-based band Seratones. Asante’s photographs, designs, and writing have appeared in private and museum collections, as well as in The International Review of African American Art, The Guardian, The Trace, The New York Times, NPR, ProPublica, Bloomberg, Objectiv, MSNBC, Oxford American, The Arkansas Times, and more.

Michael Warren Wilson is a filmmaker and artist who grew up in 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, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Entermultimediale, Indie Memphis, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Rotterdam Film Festival. His first feature documentary, an exploration of American Christian fascism titled Silhouette City, premiered in competition at the Miami International Film Festival and aired on the CBC, Russia Today, and the BBC. He has presented his work to audiences at Xerox PARC, the World Affairs Council, Harvard Divinity School, CalArts, the Goethe Institute, and the Royal College of Art. 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.