Italian families in Australia to be celebrated in new comedy film
What can a short film featuring straitjackets, salami and a shortage of sanity tell us about Italian families in Australia? Plenty says a Brisbane author planning to bring one of her plays to the screen.
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A Brisbane author-turned filmmaker plans to celebrate her Italian heritage by getting people laughing about it.
Josie Montano, from Ferny Hills, is making her one-act play The Great Escape Italian Style (TGEIS) into a short film to enter into short-film festivals locally and overseas.
“TGEIS is semi-autobiographical, and based on a real car trip experienced with my son as a teen and his nonni (my Italian parents),” Montano said.
“A typical 10-minute car ride with Italian grandparents can turn into a slow poke drive with multiple stops stretching out for hours.
“In the first half of my life I wanted to discard anything to do with my cultural upbringing, and yet now the older I become the more I yearn to become closer to my heritage, to share the stories of my parents’ generation.
“Over my creative writing years I have discovered a pattern whereby I tend to stereotype my characters into three generational boxes.
“Yet this has been therapeutical not only for me but for my fellow ‘sandwich’ generation.
“We deal with our awkwardness, embarrassment and shame of being migrant children who are trying to fit into the Australian way of life … with humour.”
The story takes place within Nonno Giacobbo’s car.
They have collected Jake who, with help from his mother Maria, has just escaped from a mental health institution.
His grandparents assume he was on holiday and they had picked him up from a hotel named after a saint, oblivious to the fact he is wearing a straitjacket.
Mother and son cannot convey to the nonni that today there is an urgency to “get the hell out of there”.
Montano said most Italo-Australians would identify with her characters.
“They are the foundations of a traditional Italian ‘casa’ ie: A nonno and nonna who because of their long-term struggles of settling in an unknown country have held onto their culture and traditions for dear life and live in their ‘Little Italy’ bubble,” she said.
“Then we have the adult child, generally first generation Australian, who sits between their parents and their own children, the sandwich generation – embarrassed by their culture growing up, yet fiercely defensive of it at the same time.
“Finally the grandchild – with already a generation gap and communication challenges between them, they see their nonni as harmless aliens who aren’t to be taken seriously.
“Their nonni see their grandchildren as the futures they never had, the fruits of their migration sacrifices – and therefore feel they have the right to smother them.”
Montano hopes the film will give audiences a richer understanding of the Italo-Australian culture, and to leave with a sense of joy and happiness similar to that experienced at an Italian festival.
Montano, and filmmaker Arryn Leigh Cox from Narangba, are trying to raise $2000 to fund production costs. Go to www.pozible.com/profile/josie-montano
For more details, email josiemontano@gmail.com
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