Biography
Jill Evans Petzall was a national award-winning video maker who is known for casting a balanced light on social-issues and for accurately portraying subjects that are not often represented in mainstream media. Her work offers poetic and uncommon insights about human beings speaking within the grip of their daily lives. She was drawn to the authentic, the remarkable, and the profound in her subjects.
Her videos have been shown in museums, at conferences, and on public television and cable stations throughout the United States and Japan. Her many Writer/Producer honors include four Emmy Awards for writing and producing; a Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Award; a CINE Golden Eagle Award; and the Golden Reel Award from ITVA. In addition, her work has garnered six Emmy nominations; a Cable ACE nomination; three National Educational Film and Video Festival awards; and the prestigious National Poetry Association and Television Literacy's Maya Angelou Award.
Since 1983, Evans Petzall has produced over forty documentaries and has been scriptwriter for others. She worked exclusively for not-for-profit agencies, among them, KETC (Channel 9, St. Louis PBS affiliate); National Council of Jewish Women, St. Louis Section (NCJW); Literacy Investment for Tomorrow-MO (LIFT-MO), and Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Petzall has an M.A. in Philosophy; she was a Senior Instructor at the Honors College at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where she has taught since 1994.
Her work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago Video Data Bank; Saint Louis Art Museum, 1986; Churchill Memorial Museum, 1991; Goethe Institute, Los Angeles, 1991; (AFI) American Film Institute, 1991; Missouri History Museum, 2001; and Forum for Contemporary Art.
Petzall received the University's Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumna Award, 2006, and the Outstanding Person of the Year Award, 1997, from the University of Missouri School of Social Work in St. Louis. Her productions have been awarded grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, Missouri Arts Council (MAC), Regional Arts Commission (RAC), School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Community Access for Local Origination Programming (CALOP) -- as well as from private foundations: the Roblee Foundation, the Fox Family Foundation, and others.
Petzall was a Senior Instructor at Honors College at University of Missouri-St. Louis. Over many years, she has also taught courses at Washington University and Webster University, both in St. Louis.
She earned a B.A. In Philosophy and English Literature (Magna cum Laude) and an M.A. in Philosophy, both from Washington University. She was also a Senior Instructor at University of Missouri - St. Louis Honors College and Washington University. She is the mother of three children and six grandchildren.
