The Thing About Greece

Jagged Melon Productions is an indie production company, founded in New Zealand now based in Athens, Greece


Jagged Melon Productions has launched a documentary which looks at the history of snowboarding in Greece, and includes numerous interviews, a plethora of archive footage, and ultimately, a detailed look at the country’s mountainous potential. Jagged Melon’s documentary is the story of a group of passionate snowboarders, who shed light on the history of the sport in Greece, as well as the incredible future potential they see in the vast Greek backcountry. The film is entitled The Thing About Greece.

Jagged Melon Productions is an indie production company, founded in New Zealand by Greek American filmmaker Themistocles Lambridis in 2011. It is now based in Athens, Greece. The company has won best film several times at international film festivals, and Themistocles has been named best cinematographer of the Rialto 48HOUR Film Fest, New Zealand. Since returning to Greece in 2014 he has worked on documentaries for VICE and a tourism campaign commissioned by the Athens airport, as well as filming a TV series on SKAI channel.

With one season of filming done, the crew joined indiegogo to crowdfund the second half of the feature. Themistocles (Themis) Lambridis, founder of Jagged Melon, began making films in New Zealand, deep in the heart of adventure sports. He decided to leave New Zealand as well as Australia and return to Greece, where he would chase his dream, in spite of the crisis.

Themistocles was in NZ playing for the Greek national ice hockey team in 2009, in the Div3 World champs in Dunedin, when he approached a couple of boys on the Kiwi team to ask where he should go if he wanted to play hockey and snowboard for a season.

“Twenty-five guys turned around and said ‘Queenstown’. So off I went, and a season turned into almost five years,” he says.

After working on his first short films, he found beauty in narrative, and began focusing on documentary style projects.

“I love to chase adrenaline with my camera and I finally found the opportunity to combine a unique story, the sport I love and the country I call home,” says Themis.

In 1978, a couple of renegade kids in northern Greece took their home-made snowboards up to one of the local ski fields, and unwittingly began a series of events that would popularise snowboarding in the country for years to come. By the late ’90s they had had enough. Shutting down virtually every park and jump and closing their doors to this winter counter-culture, the Greek snowboard apocalypse had begun.

Almost 20 years later, some of the boys are still up on the hill, spending their winters teaching kids the same sport that saw them through their adolescence, amidst riding new zones and discovering more and more away from the pistes. There is so much amazing terrain to ride here, steeps, mellows, tours, climbs and even some good fluffy stuff. It’s a vast playground … waiting to be discovered.

“Epic descents in beautiful mountain landscapes, things you would never imagine to see in a coastal country like this, are at our fingertips and we’ve only just begun to discover them,” Themis tells Neos Kosmos.

The group of friends and adrenaline lovers behind the label guarantees you will be blown away by the beauty and potential of the Greek mountains, just as they themselves were.

“At Jagged Melon Productions, we take pride in presentation, and as such our films have been likened to the most delicious piece of candy you have ever eaten, times one million!”

Family starts becoming important a little way down the line. Themis and his partner (who’s also Greek), decided it was time to really decide whether they were going to spend their lives in NZ or back home, closer to their folks.

“Don’t get me wrong, we loved it in Queenstown, and had our lives pretty set up, but after a couple of 36-hour trips home a year you start to wonder where your priorities lie,” he explains.

Although Themis is a hyper personality he reveals that there is a more intimate side to him, which probably creeps its way into his work.

“Everything that has ever affected me has made an emotional connection with me, so when I’m trying to present something to an audience, I always try to reach in and grab their souls,” he muses.

“There’s the family thing, but you know there’s a whole untouched side of Greece that people just don’t know about, and a lot of it is world class.”

Mountains, beaches, rivers, canyons, you name it. There’s a few wee little tracks here and there, but if you venture off the beaten track there’s an epic world that’s just been neglected for some reason. Extreme sports?

“It’s definitely not as big as your neck of the woods, but the potential is huge. Who knows, maybe I can help put Greece on the map again,” he says.

“I’m actually half way through my dream project!”

Themis is working on a documentary about the colourful history of snowboarding in Greece, and the evolution through the years to its current state of offering some of the best back country terrain in Europe.

“No-one really knows about the Greek mountains, even though the country’s land mass is 80 per cent mountainous,” Themis adds.

“I’ve teamed up with some of the best Greek riders, and we’re on par to splash the Greek mountains onto the global scene.”

“This country needs a boost, you know,” he explains “on every level, and I want my contribution to be to raise its profile in the eyes of winter sports fans.”

He is in the process of fundraising for the second season of filming now, and it’s going really well. The goal is to raise 12,000 euros to pay for 3 crew members and 15 riders to spend 3 months filming this winter. It’s all backcountry, so the funding will mainly go towards living and travel expenses.

“Petrol, food, shelter and the odd warm shower are what I’m aiming to give every member on the crew. I think that’s fair.”

For more info check the campaign out at www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-thing-about-greece-a-snowboard-documentary
or contact Themis at jagged.melon@gmail.com
or the facebook page at facebook.com/thethingaboutgreece
or follow their updates at @thethingaboutgreece