Biography

Rachel Watanabe-Batton is an Emmy-Award winning film and television producer and founder of Contradiction and Struggle, which tells stories that reframe history and culture, and connects cinema, causes and capital. Watanabe-Batton executive produced the musical "Sneakerella" (dir. Liz Allen) for Disney Plus, which won four 2022 Emmys including Outstanding Fiction Special. Credits include short film "Seeking" by filmmaker Julie Dash for the International African American Museum; "Out/Side of Time" by Jenn Nkiru for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Afrofuturist Room; Consulting Producer on EPIX docu-series "By Whatever Means Necessary" by Director/EP, Keith McQuirter, which won 2021 NAACP Award for Outstanding Directing.

Watanabe-Batton is producing partners with Julie Dash on multiple projects. The two are completing docu-series "Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl" based on book "Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl" by Vertamae Smart Grosvenor. She also produced Dash's exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for "In America" Spring 2022 Costume Institute exhibition. Watanabe-Batton's producing credits include non-fiction series "I Pity the Fool" with Mr. T (TV Land/ Lionsgate), barbershop documentary "Cutting Edge" (Cinemax/HBO), and sports docu-series "Insider Training" (Discovery). She has produced narrative films with numerous auteur directors including "Ripe" (Mo Ogrodnik), "Book of Love" (Jeff Byrd), and shorts "The Killers" (Tanya Hamilton) and "Bajo del Perro" (Polish Brothers). Her film directing/producing credits reflect her wide range of interests, like documentary "Crisis in the Crib: Saving Our Nation's Babies" linking infant mortality to systemic racism for The Office of Minority Health; and "Blueprint" lifestyle series for Martha Stewart. Her debut film "Once You're In," (WGBH) co-directed with Lauren Greenfield stars undocumented Irish immigrants and features poet laureate of Ireland, Seamus Heaney.

Watanabe-Batton's fluency with intersectional storytelling is rooted in a lifetime of crossing class, race, gender and demographic lines, and is strengthened by years of collaborations with musical and visual artists. Her first jobs in film were as development assistants at Danny Glover's Carrie Productions and story researcher for Quincy Jones Entertainment. Many of the projects she researched at Beverly Hills Library in a pre-digital world have yet to be produced. Her breakthrough job was working in creative development for veteran producers Paula Weinstein, Mark Rosenberg, Peter Heller and Julie Bergman at Spring Creek Productions on the Warner Bros Burbank lot. "During the L.A. Rebellion we organized demonstrations and food giveaways from the studio lot alongside developing films." She assisted Australian film director Peter Weir on "Fearless" starring Jeff Bridges and production managed at Propaganda Films on iconic commercials, music videos and young adult sci-fi series "Thunderbirds."

In the heyday of hip hop music videos, Watanabe-Batton co-founded NY production company Department of Film at Goldcrest Post with filmmaker Nick Quested. She has produced content for top recording artists, executive produced celebrity promo campaigns for multiple Viacom platforms and helmed numerous international productions. As a director, MTV Africa music video "Incomplete" for Ghanaian artist Tinny won an MTV Award on the continent; and her Miami frat video "Play No Games," for artist and mega producer Lil Jon stayed in top-ten rotation for several weeks. As a commercial and promos producer, she has helmed major award-winning international ad campaigns for premiere brands working with celebrity talent and Cannes Lion winning directors like Frank Budgen and Aaron Duffy.

During Watanabe-Batton's time as Chair of the Board of Directors (2018-2022) of Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), the organization won a media-influencing Supreme Court decision. Investing in the future of media equity and empowerment, during her tenure, MNN developed a new two-story studio facility in Hudson Yards, which opened doors in 2023. She served on the board of New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) and co-founded the collective Women Independent Producers (WIP). Watanabe-Batton is an advocate for more sustainable and inclusive business models and was honored by New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment with a MADE IN NY Award for her service as Producers Guild of America (PGA East) Vice Chair (2012-2018) Diversity Chair (2008-2018) and co-founder of PGA Women's Impact Network.

Born in New York City, during early childhood she lived in a log cabin in the woods of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, then on a Catholic Worker Farm in Western Massachusetts with her adopted/foster Swedish family who are renowned stained glass makers. She returned to city life as a toddler, and grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Northeast Bronx with her New York City public school teacher parents. Her Japanese American mom and African American dad taught her to be interested in all types of art, music, films, sports, languages and to care about the struggles of working people. Surrounded by an extended family of multi-cultural progressive educators and activists, her independent spirit is rooted in survival -- her mother's imprisonment as a newborn at Heart Mountain Wyoming Japanese American confinement site during WW II, her biological father's family surviving a genocide in Nigeria, her brilliant Black working-class father who taught her and many of his students about history, music and film; and that great thinkers can come from humble beginnings. An innate appreciation of the marginalized taught her that branding can change one from an "enemy alien" to "model minority" in a lifetime -- "Storytelling has the power to create compassion and freedom or bias and fear, and I prefer to create pathways for freedom."
- IMDb mini biography by: Rachel Watanabe-Batton