March 10, 2021
Historian of The Hill
Around Town St. Charles County to begin vaccinating next phase. Pg. 2 St. Charles County Ambulance District Chief to retire April 30. Pg.3 Construction begins on Route 364 ramps near Heritage Crossing. Pg.4
Business
BCI Skills Center announces upcoming job training courses. Pg. 6
Features Submitted photo “America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill” is directed and produced by St. Charles native Joseph Puleo. This documentary explores the historic roots of The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis, chronicling the Italians immigrating in search of the American Dream and building a “Little Italy” that still flourishes to this day. Neighboring Schnucks stores sell the DVD for $19.99 or borrow from the St. Charles City/County library or rent off of Amazon Prime.
St. Charles filmmaker chronicles the fading history of one of St. Louis’ most iconic neighborhoods By Brett Auten St. Charles auteur Joseph Puleo is gaining critical and commercial acclaim for his work that focuses near and dear in the hearts of a lot of St. Louisans. “America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill” is a documentary that chronicles the many stories that can be found in The Hill, an Italian-American neighborhood in the western part of St. Louis. The film has played multiple PBS stations and is now available on Amazon Prime to rent or buy or purchase at Schnucks. The film debuted on PBS in November and garnered top viewing number for the network. “It was a real labor of love,” he said. “The thought process going into it was, would other people be interested in this story?”
Puleo, 28, is a 2010 graduate of St. Charles High School and a 2014 graduate of Lindenwood University. He has multiple family members that lived on The Hill and would
“That was a surreal experience. To shoot something at my parents’ house and then, a year later, to watch it at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and screened in front of thousands of people in Montreal, it was incredible.” ~Joseph Puleo, Director and Producer, “America’s Last Little Italy: The Hill”
visit as a child. The film was produced by Rio Vitale and Steve Cakouros. Vitale published a book on The Hill, and he went to Puleo with the idea of making a film as the neighborhood was losing its elderly residents of the neighborhood. So Puleo snapped to it. If there was a Hill resident that was over the age of 70-75 years old, he and his crew were going to interview them. For the entire summer, they interviewed 30 people over the age of 80. All in all, 70 people were interviewed with 55 making the cut. At the end of the film you see the “In Memoriam,” section and at last count, they had lost 11 of the people that they interviewed just in this two-year period of making the film. See ‘HILL’ page 2
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Recipe, Movie & Sudoku. Pg. F-1 CLASSIFIEDS AND HOME & GARDEN. Pg. F-2 /F-3 Moore On Life, Yeggs & Crossword. Pg. F-4
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