Category: Interview

FINDING YINGYING screens as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival November 5th – 22nd.Ticket information for the virtual screening can be found HERE The feature is followed by a Q&A with director Jiayan “Jenny” Shi and co-producer Shilin Sun.

“Finding Yingying” chronicles the search for Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old Chinese student who had only recently arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017 when she disappeared. The filmmaker, Jenny Shi, also a Chinese expatriate, was studying journalism at Northwestern University and volunteered to help in the search. When Yingying’s family members and boyfriend arrived in the States to engage in the hunt for the missing woman, Shi served as translator and guided them through the alien landscape. By recording events as they transpired, Shi captures the unfolding narrative from a particularly privileged and empathetic position. A moving and expertly told true-crime story, “Finding Yingying” also explores larger subjects within that framework: the ambitions of young Chinese students who come to the U.S. in great numbers to pursue an education, the cultural divides that they have to bridge, and the generational differences between more traditional Chinese parents and their modern-age children. The Hollywood Reporter writes: “The unfolding investigation is presented with a level of suspense that’s involving and never exploitive. Besides being an agile storyteller, Shi, who shared DP duties with Shilin Sun, has a strong eye. She crafts potent visuals without the slightest showiness, whether capturing moments of tenderness or raging despair, or examining existing footage to highlight chilling details.”

Director Jiayan “Jenny” Shi took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about FINDING YINGYING

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 12th 2020

Tom Stockman: Congratulations on your film FINDING YINGYING. I watched it last night and thought it was terrific.

Jiayan “Jenny” Shi: Thank you. We are so excited to be showing it at the St. Louis Film Festival which is not far from where the incident in the film happened. 

TS: How did you first hear about the disappearance of the Yingying Zhang? 

JS: When she went missing, I was an International student at Northwestern University.  I was in a lot of Chinese chat groups and one was my college alumni group.  I learned about Yingying’s disappearance from friends and alumni back in China.  I didn’t think originally about making a documentary. I was just trying to spread the word about her and see what we could do to find her and I was posting information on my social media. I went down to Champaign to help with the search and after Yingying’s parents arrived, a lot of Chinese people would visit with them. They did not speak English and they did not know much about America. 

TS: But you had never met Yingying before, had you? 

JS: No I had not. I learned from somebody at the University of Illinois at Champaign about this case and then I learned that she and I had actually attended the same university in China. 

TS: How could you relate to Yingying? Talk about that and talk about her diary that you narrate in your film. 

JS: I could definitely relate to her. We were both international students . I didn’t know what happened to her but I knew how worried her parents must have been. My parents learned about the disappearance while they were in China and they had been texting me a lot, urging me to not go outside, and just stay home and be safe. They warned me not to go to Champaign because there might be somebody dangerous there. Yingying was someone who probably had similar experiences as me, Someone who just came to the US. It wasn’t until I attended a press conference, about two months after her disappearance, that her family revealed that she actually had a diary. Yingying’s boyfriend read the last line in the last entry of her diary at the press conference: “Life is too short to be ordinary”. Those were her own words in her handwriting but I didn’t see the rest of the diary until 2018, a year after her disappearance. 

TS: When did you come to the US?

JS: I came to the US in the fall of 2016, just about 10 months before all of this happened. I was pretty new to the US. So in 2018 I got access to the diary. That was the first time I read, in her handwriting, her experience being an international student. 

TS: She speaks of loneliness in her diary.  Is that something you felt when you came to the US at first? 

JS: Definitely.  I myself kept a diary, but I didn’t write it down, I put it on social media.  But yes, I was lonely and I was home sick. And I had to adapt to the environment here very quickly because I started my graduate program and it was a one year program  so I had to familiarize myself immediately to the learning environment here and overcome the language barriers and get to know the culture.  Before I came here, I thought I was well-prepared. I passed the exams, got the grades to get into Northwestern and familiarize myself with American media.  I had never been to the US, so for me living here was something totally different and challenging. And I’d say it was not just challenging for me but for Yingying and a lot of us when we first come here. Everyone shares that similar experience. 

TS: You went back and did some follow up interviews in China while Yingying’s family was preparing for the murder trial. There was one scene where Yingying’s mother looks at you  and says that you remind her of her daughter. How did that make you feel? 

JS: I have mixed feelings.  That was not the first time she mentioned that.  When I first met her here in the US, she told me that I looked like her daughter. I did not know what I should say to her. Sometimes when she would mention that, she looked happy so I felt that maybe that was a comfort to have someone around who looked like her daughter. But on the other hand that was also a reminder that her daughter is gone and there is someone else here that just looks like her. So for me that was a mixed feeling.  I did not know what to say and I did not want to say the wrong thing and make her cry. She was very emotional and I was very careful about what I said and the way I behaved. 

TS: When you were in China you captured some very intimate moments of grief with the Zhang family.  Angry moments with breaking of dishes and cursing and it gets pretty intense. Was there some footage that you shot that you chose not to use for that sequence? 

JS: I say we put every major moment about how the loss of Yingying has affected her family in the film. Specifically speaking about that fight, we used very little footage. They were throwing things at each other but we did not include that.  Also, as a filmmaker, I tried to navigate my role. Nobody saw that flight coming, so when it first happened we were already filming. Right away, I tried to stop the fight but we cut that part. I tried to calm them down.  Besides that, if you ask about what else we shot  but didn’t use, We actually follow different characters including the volunteer searchers who appears in the first part of the story. We wanted to document them and the search.  We didn’t want to miss anything, so we had a lot of that footage that we didn’t use.  We really wanted the story to focus on Yingying and her family.  We focused on their perspective to put the audience in their shoes, this experience as a family and what happened to them. 

TS: The Zhan family seemed determined to see Yingying’s murderer executed.  Were they aware how difficult it is to get a death penalty conviction in the US? Did they have an attorney explaining this to them? 

JS: Yes, they did have an attorney explaining the whole American criminal justice system to them. Yingying’s boyfriend was a PhD candidate at that time and he had more knowledge about the differences between the Chinese and the US criminal justice systems. 

TS: Explain that. How is carrying out the death penalty different in China? 

 JS: I’m not an expert, but I would say that is something like this happened in China, it is very likely that the defendant would be found guilty and then would get the death penalty. I’ve never really followed a court case in China but that judgment’s based more on cultural background and I think that Yingying’s parents share the same cultural background as I have, so it was understandable that they would have that kind of hope  that he would get the death penalty. I myself, after having followed the story for over three years, now understand better how the US criminal justice system works. For a long time I wondered about such a heinous crime that happened to this innocent woman with such a bright future of head of her. She had her life taken away from her by this person, who I don’t even want to mention  because I don’t want to glorify what he did.  I was very aware of the family’s desire for the death penalty.  And that’s always something interesting to present in the film  because I think in the media coverage there are a lot focus on the crime itself and all the gruesome details. But from my perspective, as someone from the Chinese community, I feel like Yingying and her family somehow got lost in the media narrative.  The way the family was portrayed in the mainstream media is the typical victim stereotype. It was always mom crying  and speaking in Mandarin.  A lot of reporters only speak English so they can’t really get a cultural connection to Yingying’s family.  To me, this film is to show something that is not often seen in mainstream media and to go beyond the headlines and to show the humanity behind the heinous crime. In the film I see a lot of different people coming out to support a family. That was something we wanted to highlight. 

TS: You did a great job with that. Has Yingying’s family seen your film? 

JS: Yes. We showed the film to them before any public screening because we wanted to make sure that they were on the same page as everything in the film.  We took their feedback into consideration. We wanted to make sure they were OK with everything.  I was a bit nervous before the family watched the film.  I worried that they might feel uncomfortable about the family conflict that we showed.  I think in Chinese culture people don’t want to show their family affairs in public but I was surprised at how much Yingying’s parents and her boyfriend were OK with everything.  That was exactly what happened to them and those were the facts, and that’s not something people always see in the media.  Also there were our efforts to highlight Yingying as a person, to try to keep her alive throughout the film. Her family really appreciated our  efforts. 

TS: You’ve kept in touch with the Zhen family I assume.

JS: Yes. We have had several subsequent conversations. I’d like to keep them updated as to what is going on in terms of the film. Yingying’s mom is staying at home because of her health condition. Her brother is working at a restaurant and has a little baby now and got married.  I hope that will bring some joy and happiness to the family.  Yingying’s father went back to work as a truck driver.  But to them it was very difficult for life to just go on.  It’s impossible for them to get over this. 

TS: Let’s talk about you. Is this your first feature length documentary? 

JS: Yes. I studied journalism in China for my bachelor’s degree and then immediately after that I started studying journalism at Northwestern University.  I took some documentary journalism classes  so my specialization is video journalism.  I try to use visuals to tell powerful stories. That was in 2016 and 2017. Yingying’s story came out the last quarter when I was in school. I started filming it as a student  because I had followed the story for a while and I had also created a student version as a student project. I graduated and continued to work on the project.  And now it is a feature-length film. 

TS: Has it played a lot of other film festival? 

JS: Our world premiere was supposed to be at SXSW  but we had to wait for the next timing to launch the film  so we started robust festival run in October  and we have screened it in 13 film festivals so far  including the Chicago International Film Festival , Los Angeles Asian-Pacific  film Festival where it has been well-received by different audiences. Not only Asian America audiences but also general audiences. So we really see the potential for bringing the story further . We hope the film can travel to different places so more people can hear Yingying’s story and she can be memorialized in a good way. 

TS: What’s your next project? 

JS: I have started a project. It is also related to the American Chinese Experian  but I can’t say much about it now because it is early development,  but I am currently doing research. 

TS: Good luck then with FINDING YINGYING and all of your future projects.

JS: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.

THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY screens as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival November 5th – 22nd. Ticket information for the virtual screening can be found HERE

The ambitious documentary THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY by St. Louis-based filmmaker Matthew Rice analyzes how an ex-slave became one of America’s greatest tall-tale heroes: John Henry. Based on Scott Reynolds Nelson’s book “Steel Drivin’ Man,” the film provides a fresh perspective on the song and folk tale by exploring a myriad of related subjects, including the convict-lease program, an unjust legal system developed after the Civil War as a replacement for slavery. Director Rice worked as an intern on Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War” series, and his film shares some of that master documentarian’s sensibility. Rice’s debut film, the short “The Yodel Within,” played the 2011 St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, and “The Ballad of John Henry” received the jury award for Best Editing at this year’s event.

Matthew Rice is a documentary filmmaker based in St. Louis, MO. He currently works as a videographer for the Washington University School of Medicine developing educational content for the doctors of tomorrow. Matthew began his filmmaking career at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television creating his first short documentary film, The Yodel Within. This documentary was selected by five film festivals winning several awards including “Audience Favorite” and “Best Credits Sequence.” This project inspired Matthew to dedicate himself completely to learning the craft of documentary story telling. He has collaborated with experts at the top of their field to develop video content that both engages and educates audiences.

Matthew Rice took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about his film

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 11, 2020

Tom Stockman: What inspired you to make this film about John Henry?

Matthew Rice: Like a lot of people, I’d heard about John Henry as a child. I read a book by Jack Keats  with beautiful illustrations and that was my first introduction. Disney made a movie that had several Tall Tale heroes in it including John Henry as well as Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan.  So I knew about the legend that way and I always thought it seemed like a fun story, and as I got older, I became increasingly more interested in how history played into it and whether or not John Henry was a real person and what inspired his story.

TS: What were some of the biggest challenges in making THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY?  

MR: It was my first feature-length documentary, so just learning how to make that happen was a challenge. But really the biggest challenge was that there was not a lot of archival materials or photographs available. Typically when you’re watching a historical documentary, you’ll see a lot of photos and footage from a particular time period. A lot of these workers connected to the John Henry story were illiterate and the working conditions were terrible. This was a real dark chapter in American history that would have been forgotten if not for a lot of historians such as the Scott Nelson, who I worked with and who dug up a lot of the census records and Virginia state penitentiary records so we could try and figure out who John Henry really was and what were some of the challenges that he faced.  

TS: And also you spend a lot of time in the documentary on the debate over where exactly this challenge between John Henry and the steam drill may have taken place. Talcott, Virginia claims to be the home of John Henry’s achievement and they have a John Henry Days Festival there.  Did you travel to that?  

MR: Yes, I went to two of those festivals. They have a big parade but the parade itself doesn’t feature much about John Henry until the end when there is a float with him. They also have an event there that explains how tunnel construction at the time was such a unique form of labor. That city does claim John Henry’s fame was there and to this day most of the residents that I talk to there, like Jimmy Costa, an historian who appears in the film, feel very strongly that John Henry did work on the Big Bend tunnel. But some agree with Scott Nelson who claims that Henry was actually working on the Lewis Tunnel. That’s totally fair and they are welcome to have their opinions. There’s always going to be a feeling that we can change our understanding of some things.  I’ve looked into the research that was done at the Big Bend tunnel in Talcott and another tunnel in Alabama to find which one John Henry worked. When I looked at the research on both of those tunnels, I did not find the evidence  that I found at Lewis Tunnel. The facts were that they had a prison inmate named John Henry and there are records of him working at Lewis Tunnel and there are records of a steam drill being used in the Lewis Tunnel, so all of the elements are there.  

TS: How did that John Henry die?  

MR: There’s no exact record but during that time most of the prison inmates that were working in the tunnels were dying from consumption, which was a general term for lung infection.  Silicosis was not well known at that time but it’s likely that a lot of people died at that time from silicosis working in those tunnels.  They did not have a good understanding of it nor did they know how to treat it, and ultimately they just kept forcing people to work in these unsafe conditions.  

TS: Did they not even wear masks when they were working in these tunnels?  

MR: No they did not wear masks during that time.  I show clips in the film from a government-made documentary from the 1920s about silicosis and that was the first time alarms were raised that silica dust could kill you. Before that no one really worried about it. Now of course there are OSHA rules but back then there were no masks or protection. Records show some workers refused to go back into the tunnel after there had been an explosion there, so I think some of the men knew the danger but they just didn’t know it was causing so much damage to their lungs.  

TS: I noticed some miniatures that you filmed, like a diorama. Are those in a museum somewhere?  

MR: That was a diorama at Hinton Railroad Museum near Talcott Virginia  that I used a couple of shots of.  An artist carved those figures out of wood.  He had passed away but I did speak with his son and got some of the history behind it. It took him 10 years to create that model. In addition to that, because there was such a lack of archival footage to use in the film, I tried my hand at creating some miniature sets as well.  I used a miniature railroad model.

TS: I think the railroad models added a nice element to the  look of the film.  Let’s talk about you. I understand that you interned with Ken Burns. That sounds like a pretty prestigious gig. How did you get that?  

MR: Partly luck. At that time I was a film student  at Loyola Marymount University. The Dean of the film school had a lot of connections with documentary filmmakers including Ken Burns. Burns came and gave the graduation commencement  and let us know that they were planning on doing internships and that I could be a trial student. So I drove all the way across the country to a small town in New Hampshire where Ken Burns works.   I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there but I absolutely loved it. I learned so much about how to craft a story and I wanted to try it myself.  That’s where it all started  

TS: What else did you learn specifically from Ken Burns?  

MR: Everything from digitizing archival images and footage to how to conduct interviews, how to organize a story based on interviews and narration.  One of the main takeaways that I got was that it takes a really long time to make one of his television broadcasts and he spends so much time making sure everything is perfect and factually correct. That was a good lesson because when I left there and started working on this film, it took me a good five years  to finish it.  It’s a lengthy process.  

TS: Has Ken Burns seen THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY?

MR: I don’t know. I worked mostly with his editors and I know they have seen the film. That was kind of the beauty of that internship that Ken Burns is always there it is always going to teach you stuff but he had a huge team of people working on his projects. They were ll very gifted individuals and I learned so much from each one of them and they’ve always been there to support me even after I left.  

TS: You say this was your first feature film. What other kinds of films have you made?  

MR: I’ve mostly worked on short documentary films. Some of them have been paid jobs, working with nonprofits, or with companies that want a documentary film online or for advertising. I’ve shot some of my own documentaries. The first documentary short I worked on was called THE YODEL WITHIN. I was trying to learn how to yodel, and that was my first introduction into the St. Louis International Film Festival  and the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase.  

TS: There’s a vibrant filmmaking community here in St. Louis. What’s your next project?

MR: Covid has made things a little more difficult but I’ve already started doing research and interviews for a project on the story behind Paul Bunyan  and how that legend came to be.  I’m sticking with the Tall Tale stories.

TS: Has THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY played at many film fests so far?  

MR: Yes it’s playing this weekend at one in Texas and one in Virginia.  So far it’s been in 15 film festivals.

TS: Great. How has it been received?  

MR: Very well. It’s hard with Covid because you don’t get to go out and interact with people  but it’s amazing how these films festival have transitioned onto the online format,  and I’ve been getting a lot of positive comments about the film 

TS: Good luck with THE BALLAD OF JOHN HENRY and all of your future projects

MR: Thanks!

“America’s Last Little Italy” explores the deep historic roots of the Hill, St. Louis’ iconic Italian neighborhood. Italians who immigrated to St. Louis in search of the American Dream built a “Little Italy” in the city’s heart that still flourishes to this day. Similar neighborhoods in other urban areas have long ago lost their specifically Italian character, making the Hill the last of a dying breed. The first feature by St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase alum Joseph Puleo, whose short “Top Son” won Best Comedy at the 2016 event, “America’s Last Little Italy” was the audience-choice winner as Best Documentary at this year’s Showcase.

AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL screens as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival November 5th – 22nd. Ticket information for the virtual screening can be found HERE

Joseph Puleo, director of AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL , took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the film

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman July 6th 2020 (This interview originally posted when AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL was part of the St. Louis Filmmaker’s Showcase)

Tom Stockman: Congratulations on your documentary AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL. It’s very well done.

Joey Puleo: Thank you.

TS: Everybody likes The Hill. What is your relationship to the neighborhood? 

JP: I had family that lived on The Hill, so growing up I used to visit all the time, but I didn’t really know the history behind the neighborhood. I just knew it was a place where my Italian relatives lived and because of the familial connection and my Italian American heritage, I’ve always felt a kinship to The Hill.     

TS: How did you come up with this idea of making a documentary about The Hill? I’m a little surprised no one has before. 

JP: Rio Vitale, our Executive Producer, had written a book on The Hill and he  came to me with the idea of me directing a documentary on it.  There has been a lot of books written about The Hill, but no documentaries. There has been programs on PBS about the restaurants, and the news stations would often go down there and highlight toasted ravioli and things like that, but there’s never been a film about the history of the neighborhood. The thing that really lit a fire under Rio was that the older generation on The Hill were starting to pass away. He was worried that if someone didn’t come along and film interviews with these people now, then all of these stories and all of this history was going to be lost. 

TS: Good point. And some of these participants in your film have indeed passed away. When did you film all of these interviews? 

JP: Rio came to us in late May 2018 and within five days, we were on The Hill interviewing.  Basically anybody who was old and lived on the hill, we wanted to interview. We did 25 or 30 interviews with people who were over 80 years old. That’s where we started.  We knew we could wait with the younger residents, but the main goal was getting the interviews of the elderly done first.  So that entire summer, for three months, we did interviews. We interviewed around 70 people and about 55 made the cut.  We waited on the B-roll until the summer after. I would have a shot list so I would know what footage to get. The timing worked out beautifully for us and everything just fell right into place.

TS: Your film is very well-organized. Did you start out with a treatment, or did you just start filming and see where the story took you? 

JP: It was kind of twofold there.  When Rio told me that this was what he wanted to do, he gave me a few books to read. One of those, Immigrants on the Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis, was written by Gary Mormino, who is probably the star historian of our film.  Another book was An Urban Design Study For The Hill by Phillip C. McCurdy. He’s an architect who is also in the film. Those two books were what I used to lay out an outline, so I had a loose framework as to what I thought was important.  When I was doing these interviews with the old-timers, that’s when the story started to take shape. Everybody kept telling us that The Hill is the last real ‘Little Italy’ and that stuck with me, so I figured if I was making that claim, I had to be able to back it up.  So the first act of the film is the history of the neighborhood until till World War II. The second act was when we started getting into Father Polizzi, and seeing all of the other ‘Little Italys’ in America go under and him taking the steps to try to make sure that The Hill remained Italian and keep its ethnic identity. 

TS: You go into the history of The Hill, and illustrate how it started out as a clay mining community. Do they still mine there today?

JP: No the mines are buried under where the hill is today  

TS: Have you seen Bill Streeter‘s documentary BRICK BY CHANCE AND FORTUNE about St. Louis bricks?

JP: I have not.

TS: Oh you should. It’s all about how the mud in St. Louis produced such gorgeous red bricks. It really made me appreciate how attractive our bricks are compared to a city like Chicago which has sort of pukey yellow bricks. 

JP: I’ll have to see that. 

TS: You discuss in your film how the Northern Italians with look down on the Southern Italians, but they were all working class, I assume. 

JP: There were prejudices there that go on to this day, but that really goes back to the old country, to Italy where that’s just the way it is. The Sicilians were the peasants who worked the fields. There’s also the speaking of different dialects, not being able to understand each other.  Sicilian culture is a completely different culture than the Northerners. The Northern Italians are a lot more laid-back and subdued. When you’re thinking about Italians, you’re typically thinking about Sicilians. They are a bit more boisterous, so it’s kind of a culture clash.  Me being Sicilian helped in making the film in that it made it less difficult to talk about those things. 

TS: Was there anybody that you wanted to interview for your film but we’re unable to? 

JP: No not really.  Everybody basically wanted to be in the movie. 

TS: Yes, there’s a lot of pride in that neighborhood and I think that really comes through.

JP: Yes, they were excited about the fact that we were just there making the documentary and they wanted to be part of it. 

TS: When I was a kid growing up in West County my dad would drive us to The Hill to eat, but he would always precede ‘Hill’ with a certain derogatory  ethnic term that was used by many outsiders back in the day. I noticed that you really don’t mention that in the film.

JP: Yes, that was something we avoided on purpose. My whole view with this project was to focus on the people of the neighborhood, so I didn’t go through the thought process of people throughout other parts of St. Louis and how they view the neighborhood. The people on The Hill never referred to themselves as living on anything but ‘The Hill’, so when I was talking to them I  made the conscious decision not to mention that. I wanted to keep it insular  

TS: I get it. I get the impression that these people are likely thick-skinned. I think if someone said that term perhaps they might not be particularly offended by it. 

JP: I agree. That is just one of the names that people called it. A film gets into prejudice somewhat when we’re talking about how Italians would be viewed in someone’s head. 

TS: Yes you keep your film very positive. So many documentaries today have to have an agenda, while AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL just documents.  I like the way your film illustrated how those on The Hill addressed crime. There’s this fellow Joe Causino in your film who encouraged young people on The Hill to participate in sports instead of joining gangs and causing trouble. It seems like The Hill is always been somewhat crime-free at least in terms of violent crime  

JP: Yes, and we get into that in the second act showing how the neighborhood kind of policed itself. There’s a guy in the movie named Jim Merlo and he says that if there was anything that residents of The Hill saw in terms of activities that would not bring pride to the neighborhood, they were going to step in and tell you about it. That was really the thought process of everyone on The Hill. You go down there and see the well-manicured lawns, everything is taken care of, everything is dealt with with pride. They are just not going to accept crime going on in that neighborhood. We do touch on some crime there during prohibition, but that was really a way for them to make money when they had to get involved in prohibition. It’s always been a safe neighborhood and I attribute that to members of the community not allowing criminal activity to go on.  

TS: That’s really in the spirit of Joe Causino who you talk about in the film.

JP: Yes, in the 1930s and 40s there were a lot of boys on the hill. Italians at that time we’re having a lot of children, so they were these boys in the neighborhood and Joe Causino came in and did what he did to keep them from getting into trouble. He started these sports clubs and many incredible athletes came from these clubs. It’s really a tribute to him that he saw a need  and provided an athletic arena for them to play in.  And of course from that you got Yogi Berra, and Joe Garagiola, and Frank Borgi and the other members of the 1950 soccer team that defeated England in the World Cup. 

TS: The vintage footage you used in the film spectacular. Was all of that footage on The Hill? 

JP: Yes. We got lucky. We sent out a message letting everyone know that if they had 8mm film, family home movies, we were hoping that could be donated for use in the documentary . Multiple Hill families came through with original reels of film that we were able to convert into HD. My family had some 8mm film that we were able to bring forward. That was huge for us getting that film, and not having to go to stock footage very often. We did go with stock footage for a couple of things that were happening nationally, such as things from the war, but when the documentary talks about a confectionery being on every corner, we have 8mm footage of a confectionery there.  When we talk about Family’s cooking Sunday dinners there, we have footage of that basement kitchen on The Hill. That was big for us.

TS: Oh, that was great. That’s really the heart of the film.  

JP: 100%. The biggest thing for me was keeping the audience in the era, so there’s a point where we are talking about the building of shotgun homes and the fact that a lot of the homes were built on stilts then filled in with concrete later.  I was able to go to 8mm film to show that as opposed to going down there now in 2020 and shooting in 4K and splicing it in. I really never wanted to take the audience out of that time. 

TS: What filmmakers did you collaborate with on this project? 

JP: My co-producer and editor is  Steve Cakouros

TS: Is he a St. Louis guy?

JP: Yes, we met at Lindenwood film school and have been making films together since.

TS: I remember the short comedy you made, TOP SON about the young man who looks just like Tom Cruise. I interviewed that film’s star Evan Ferrante. Wasn’t there talk about that film becoming a feature?  

JP: Yes there was. In 2016,  we did the festival circuit for TOP SON. In 2017 we got into a contest that Kevin Hart put on where our film got to go to Montreal is part of the ‘Just For Laughs’ festival. That was a huge deal for us. We came back to St. Louis and a local producer wanted to help us make it into a feature and we worked about another year on it and then the money fell through  and we were unable to go forward with TOP SON. But I guess everything happens for a reason because within a month, Rio came to us with The Hill idea and we started working on AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL. 

TS: So there is a TOP SON feature script out there? 

JP: Yes. Myself and Steve wrote a feature script, so we still have that one in the back pocket.  But this documentary about The Hill had to be made so that’s what we set our sights on.

TS: Have the residents of The Hill seen AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL yet? 

JP: No, July 10 when the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase starts virtually will be the first time that anyone will have the opportunity to see it.

TS: It’s too bad about this virus. Did you have a big a plan for some sort of screening for the movie for the people on The Hill that were involved? 

JP: The dream was to have everybody from The Hill go to a packed theater and see themselves on the big screen, especially some of the older participants.  Corona really threw a wrench into that plan, but I’m trying to be positive about everything. More people than ever will be able to see the film because it is it streaming, including a lot of people that probably wouldn’t go to a movie theater. 

TS: Beyond the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, what are your plans for the AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL? 

JP: We have submitted the film to about 15 festivals, especially ones that are located in areas with a large Italian population.  Everything at this point seems to be going online, so I don’t know if there will be any in-person festival that I will actually go to, but the goal is still to have a festival run and potentially strike a deal with a distributor, or PBS or any of those options.  

TS: I could totally see KETC running your film. They ran Bill Streeter‘s brick documentary and Ron Stevens documentary about KSHE. They seem to enjoy showing well-made documentaries with local ties.

JP: The main goal for us is to get the film seen by as many people as possible and to bring awareness of this neighborhood to the masses.  To show that this neighborhood still does exist and that it’s still vibrant and strong.  Everyone thinks that all of the Little Italys are just tourist attractions where they are selling flags and trinkets, but there’s still a Little Italy here in St. Louis that exists in its original fashion. 

TS: The Hill in St. Louis has maintained its ethnic identity unlike any other Little Italy, and I could ask you why that is, but that’s what your film is about and I think watching your film answers that questions. 

JP: Yes that was the goal of the film, to answer that question. Hopefully we did so and made the neighborhood proud and made St. Louis proud. 

TS: What is your next project  Joseph? 

JP: We’ve been talking about the potential of doing a couple of other documentaries   We have a couple of ideas but nothing that I can share at this moment   The virus has put a hamper on all the plans that we have had moving forward.

TS: Best of luck with AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL and all of your future projects.

JP: Thanks so much.