Our Team

Katherine M Acosta, director, producer, and writer for the project is a sociologist turned filmmaker. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she earned two graduate teaching awards and worked as a lecturer. She later moved to Madison, Wisconsin where she worked on several grant-funded research projects. After the historic 2011 protests in Madison, she decided to combine her passion for documentary film with her sociological research skills to try her hand at film making. She learned through teaching that students were most readily engaged in sociological analysis through film. Storytelling, after all, is the way that humans have shared history and knowledge for millennia. Divided We Fall is her first film.

Richard Acklin, her partner in life and filmmaking, serves as co-producer and production sound engineer.

Gretta Wing Miller and the late Aarick Beher, The Downtown Dailies/blue studio team, bring decades of experience to post-production. Gretta has been a film & video editor and instructor since 1978, working mostly on documentary television series and specials (American Masters, National Geographic) and independent features. She has taught film editing at Hunter College (CUNY),Final Cut Pro tutorials, and Digital Filmmaking in the College for Kids program through the UW-Madison Education Outreach.

Aarick Beher was a life-long musician and music producer, who worked with many of the most creative artists and songwriters in Madison, Wisconsin.

The incomparable Ida Jo whose music scores the film. We first heard Ida perform at a fundraiser for the Second Harvest food bank and immediately agreed there was no one else we wanted for the film. She’s an amazing talent, with a unique plucking and bow technique and clear pure vocals.

The people of Wisconsin!

Divided We Fall combines original in-depth interviews with dramatic citizen-produced video and photos to create a compelling narrative of the battle to save collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin and to resist an austerity agenda.

The film also features interviews with labor leaders, scholars and pundits such as the late Marty Beil (executive director, AFSCME Council 24), the late Frank Emspak (Workers Independent News), Professor Katherine Cramer (author, The Politics of Resentment) and Matthew Rothschild, long-time editor of the Progressive magazine.