Rachel Watanabe-Batton

Contradiction and Struggle, Founder

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” for Disney Plus starring Chosen Jacobs, Lexi Underwood and John Salley, and nominated for 11 Emmy Awards and winner of 4 2022 CAFÉ Emmys including Outstanding Fiction Special. She produced the short film “Seeking” by filmmaker Julie Dash for the International African American Museum in Charleston, and “Out/Side of Time” by artist Jenn Nkiru for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Afrofuturist Period Room Before Yesterday We Could Fly. She was Consulting Producer on EPIX docu-series “By Whatever Means Necessary” by Director/EP, Keith McQuirter, which received the 2021 NAACP Award for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary. She is in production on the documentary “Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl” with Dash based on the cookbook Vibration Cooking.