Wait—don’t you mean, “Ah, Greece! Home of the Acropolis, the Parthenon and Delphi?”
Not if you’re Lambros Malamas.
For the Greek videographer, the well-worn paths to ancient ruins and postcard-perfect monuments are far less interesting than the hidden treasures lying at the end of a mountain pass—or the rarely witnessed sunrises from places overlooked by the average guidebook.
“I hadn’t discovered myself before Scientology.”
Armed with his camera drone and thirst for the unknown, Lambros sets out to film “places that nobody else is going to. I decided to go and capture those.”
Take, for example, the mountain stronghold of Captain Zacharias, the legendary Greek patriot who defied the Turks during the last decades of the Ottoman rule over Greece. Legend told of a shadowed cave mouth known as “the hole”—the hidden exit of a secret tunnel carved from his castle through the heart of the mountain as a last, desperate path to freedom when enemies closed in.
On foot and with the help of the bird’s-eye view afforded by his drone, Lambros rediscovered and documented the centuries-old escape tunnel on the mountain of Skoufomiti.
And when Lambros unearths a secret treasure, he makes sure the world is apprised of the discovery: Whether it’s an inaccessible ancient hilltop church in the ruined city of Saint Dimitrios or the weathered Apolytares Lighthouse—the final duty of aged keeper Nikolaos Filosofof, who rescued over 100 shipwrecked passengers and crew in the winter of 1908—Lambros posts the footage, so the treasure is no longer hidden.
For the people who live in these out-of-the-way places, Lambros’ cinematic revelations can mean the difference between obscurity and opportunity.
A series of videos about Kythera awakened interest in the island home of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, and sparked an increase in tourism.
A video about the Mani Peninsula and historic Cape Tainaron—once a busy port for trade between Greek cities and other countries—found its way onto a popular morning television show.
But before Lambros could help Greece rediscover its soul, he had to first rediscover his own.
After high school and higher education, he stepped straight into the family business, carrying on a tradition three generations deep, but spent his nights in the Athens club scene because that’s what everyone else his age seemed to do.
“I was just having fun,” he remembers. “I was thinking that, ‘This is life, this is what everybody does. So let’s do it.’ But at some point, I realized I did not have a purpose.”
The turning point came when his father introduced him to Scientology.
“I discovered that when I’m talking about life, I’m talking about myself.… I hadn’t discovered myself before Scientology.”
In the process, he rekindled a childhood dream to create captivating films that ignite emotion and linger in the heart long after the screen goes dark.
And that’s exactly what he does today.
A hotel owner at Cape Tainaron put it this way: “What makes Mr. Malamas’ films is that there’s a lot of emotion.” This, in turn, enables Malamas to shine a light on “an almost unknown part of Greece to the world.”
A Mani pottery shop owner added, “My good friend Lambros has that feeling and the touch and the eye to put into his videos the soul of Mani.”
For Lambros, that soul and touch came alive thanks to Scientology.
“That gave purpose in my life,” he reflects.
Follow Lambros’ journey into the heart and soul of his beloved Greece on Meet a Scientologist, only on Scientology Network.
