ABOUT JILL
Jill is an award winning screenwriter and a documentary filmmaker who focuses on gritty character driven material and exposing the truth in compelling unexpected ways. Her screenwriting has received accolades from the Austin Film Festival, the Writer’s Lab, the Athena List, Unique Voices, Screencraft, the Almanack Writer’s Lab and Final Draft’s Big Break competition. ”See Jane Fight” was one of three feature screenplays selected for the prestigious Middlebury Script Lab and is in the top 3% on Coverfly. “Bloody Burlesque” was selected for Meg Lefauve’s Screenwriting Retreat at Hedgebrook and won Best Original Screenplay in “The Hollywood Blood Horror Competition.”
Jill’s recent doc short “Squirrel Wars” received rave reviews when it premiered at Aspen Shorts and Hot Docs, won Best Short Documentary at Hamilton NY Film Festival. It’s continuing its festival run.
Her feature doc, “Fight Like A Girl,” is about women using boxing to fight their demons and empower themselves. It played at several festivals, winning “Best Documentary” at The American Documentary Film Festival, the Artemis Film Festival and the Other Venice Film Festival. Jill was presented with an award from the World Boxing Council and from the Women's Boxing Hall of Fame.
Jill’s critically acclaimed documentary film, “Stripped” won awards at festivals, ran theatrically in New York and LA, sold internationally and ran on the Sundance Channel. Other shorts she directed and shot, played festivals such as Hot Docs, Aspen Shorts, Newport Beach, AFI, Santa Barbara Film Festival, The Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival and the International San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Jill was a producer and host on Vice’s “Cris Cyborg: On Fighting Like a Girl” and also produced a spot for Playboy’s “Journalista.” She worked as a researcher on Davis Guggenheim’s “The Dream Is Now” about immigration reform.
Morley wrote and performed the critically acclaimed play, “True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl,” which was published in “The Best Women’s Plays of 1998,” ran Off Broadway for several years, was performed across the country, including the San Francisco’s “Solo Mio Festival;” and was made into a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
A contributing writer to several periodicals including; “The Village Voice,” “Bust Magazine,” and “The New York Press,” she was a producer/correspondent with Michael Moore for “The Awful Truth.” Jill also produced radio documentaries for NPR’s “This American Life” and “The World.” Her short stories and monologues are published in several anthologies, including “True Tales of Lust and Love,” “Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong,” “Ho’s Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys,” and “Honey On a Razor,” Jill is honored to have her monologues published in several monologue collections by Gerald Lee Ratliff along with Arthur Miller, Steve Martin, David Hare,and Wendy Wasserstein.
In 2015, she won the National Golden Gloves in the Masters Division and she continues to teach women boxing and coach young girls.
Jill is currently developing five screenplays, a doc short and a limited doc series. She is a member of Film Fatales.
1. See Jane Fight: (feature) A 19-year-old MMA fighter must confront her childhood trauma when her mother, a disgraced kickboxing champion, trains her for a once-in-a-lifetime fight.
2. Bloody Burlesque: (feature) When an insecure NYC woman discovers the burlesque theater where her great grandmother performed is going into foreclosure, she is determined to save it; but as people start getting killed, she realizes it is haunted by old strippers.
3. Committed: (feature) Based on true events in 1956, a young woman must free her mother from a mental institution and resist her father's gaslighting. (Book Adaptation)
4. Seeking Susan: (Documentary) When a documentary filmmaker is devastated by the loss of her friend 20 years earlier and the way it was sensationalized by the press, she sets out on a course to humanize her friend, find some kind of justice, and forgiveness for herself.
5. The Moon Dance: (feature) In order to catch a serial killer, a brash NYC police officer must go undercover as a burlesque dancer under the tutelage of an old stripper ghost.
6. Exceptional Hooker: (Documentary short in development) While conducting a “massage session” with one of his clients, a sex worker of 37 years, working actor, memoir writer and sometimes drag performer; convinces us why at 57 years old, he is an exceptional hooker.
