Jess Pierce
St. Louis, MO
Screenwriting
Jess Pierce is a filmmaker based in St. Louis, Missouri. She produces short and long form documentary segments with various media outlets like PBS. Much of her work is in conversation with authors and artists. She has interviewed writers like Arundhati Roy and Lang Leav, and has produced livestream events featuring authors like Neil Gaiman and Zadie Smith.
In 2023, she was an artist-in-residence at Lake Studios Berlin, debuting a multi-media performance titled "buzzing" in Berlin, Germany. In 2023 she also won a Mid-America Emmy for an interview featuring the author Javier Zamora.
In addition to documentary, Pierce is also a narrative and experimental filmmaker. In 2018, her short film "The Stroke" was accepted to the St. Louis International Film Festival. In 2023 she was a jury member for the same festival.
As a writer and director, Pierce has a primary interest in spiritual yearning and and expression through the body. Much of this interest is explored through movement study, interrogating the social parameters of body and voice, and the potential liminality they can exist within. She writes from a place of "spiritual curiosity," exploring various connections between the body and the earth, the real and the suggestive. Through this, Pierce brings together elements of documentary and fiction to better articulate the intangible experience of being.