Very few even cast a momentary glance below the boot and off the beaten track towards the southern “jewel” that is Sicily.
That may all be about to change, thanks to acting tutor, director and beyondblue ambassador Vita Catalano.
The Ivanhoe local is fresh from her third trip to Sicily - and she’s returned with far more than a food coma.
This time around, visiting her parents’ hometown of Vizzini planted a seed in the talented director’s mind, which would evolve into the script of a full-length film just a month and a half later.
“When I got home I decided to sit down and write what is more or less a fictitious elaboration of my life,” Vita says.
“From then on it was really a matter of eat, sleep, write.”
The product of Vita’s wrist-breaking commitment is the tale of Marcella, a Melburnian school teacher and flamboyant beauty who makes a pivotal move to Sicily, a world light-years away from her comfortable life in Melbourne.
While Marcella is initially hired to teach English to a class of rowdy Sicilian kids, her path takes a slight detour and steers her towards an unexpected destination.
“I’ve incorporated a bit of romance as well, because you’ve got to have some love in there,” Vita laughs, adding that her dream would be to recruit Raoul Bova to play Marcella’s love interest.
Entitled La Maestra, the “love story/comedy/drama” is set between the background of Melbourne and the stunning landscape of Sicily, in particular Vizzini.
Think the iconic scenery of Federation Square one minute, followed by rolling hills dotted with Baroque-style buildings the next.
Without spoiling the story, Vita mentions that the film will showcase a substantial amount of Sicilian dialect, drawing on her upbringing in a household of vizzinesi.
According to the one-woman-band, dialect is an integral aspect of Sicilian culture, and should be promoted with pride from the island itself across the globe.
While Vita was born and raised on Australian soil, her heart has always belonged to the Belpaese.
“I’m very blessed in that we spoke Italian and Sicilian dialect at home when I was growing up,” she explains.
“I used to listen to my grandmother and parents speak about Sicily and visualise it in my head, wondering what it looked like and pretending I was there.”
Vita longed to travel to Italy from a young age, but her parents worked hard to put three children through school and an overseas family trip wasn’t financially viable.
As the decades passed, Vita’s desire to see Sicily never dwindled; finally, aged 46, she fulfilled her dream.
“It took me years to get there and I’m glad I did,” she reflects.
“I needed to walk those cobblestones and trace the footsteps of my nonna and my parents.”
Vita’s first trip to Sicily was almost the last thing she ever did.
Upon returning to Australia, she discovered she had a cancerous tumour which would have been fatal if left undetected.
It was while undergoing treatment for cancer, that Vita wrote the script to her first film, Story of Jack (2012).
In fact, she penned the words for the short film on serviettes from her hospital bed, and went on to self-fund and produce it herself, from teaching the actors to organising the film crew.
The film was circulated in schools, and Vita visited classrooms to discuss the effects and potential outcomes of bullying, as she had witnessed first-hand among some of her acting students.
“I’ve never made a cent out of [the film] and I don’t intend to; that was a gift to all the people who lack confidence and have suffered from bullying,” she says.
While Story of Jack was hugely successful in diffusing an important message across the nation, and received attention from myriad media outlets, Vita justly admits that she couldn’t produce another film on her own again.
Furthermore, she certainly couldn’t single-handedly breathe life into La Maestra, which is set between two continents separated by 14,380 kilometres of land and sea.
“The story’s there, the concept’s there and there’s really minimal that I’d like to change,” Vita says.
“What I need now is a producer to jump in and collaborate with me to get actors involved and produce it.”
The script has received rave reviews from industry greats, and proves to be so much more than the generic girl-travels-to-Europe-and-finds-romance story.
“I think it stands out because I’ve written from the heart and nowhere else,” Vita says.
“Obviously my hand is doing what it needs to do, but all my juices are coming straight from the heart and moments in my life.”
Vita’s love for Sicily is evident in everything she does, from her tendency to include the odd word n sicilianu in her sentences, to her desire to bring the beauty of the island to the international stage.
We have a feeling that if La Maestra makes it to the screen, tourists may just make space between the gondolas and sunflowers for carretti siciliani and prickly pears in the sun-kissed south.
If you know an experienced producer who would like to collaborate on the film, please contact Vita at vitacatalano6@hotmail.com
