In late summer 2007, 13 communication students and their instructor, Taso Lagos, traveled to Greece for a four-week intensive research excursion. That particular summer was more hot and dry than most, and small field fires had occurred near the beginning of the season. Within days of the group’s arrival, larger fires had started and spread throughout many of the rural areas of the country, especially on the islands.

The students were staying at Lagos’ hometown of Vitalo on the island of Euboea when the devastating fires broke out.

“It was very early during our trip,” said communication major Kevin Hanes. “We could see the fires on the hilltops from Taso’s village.”

The fires burned for five days, destroying approximately 2.3 percent of the land surface of Greece.

“After what happened, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to look into events,” Lagos said. “We then decided to change our focus in the excursion.”

The group did change its focus, from how a society in a developing country functions with the Internet to how the media portrayed the disastrous fires. However, the group didn’t finish its work that summer.

Lagos and the next group of students from his Athens Program are heading back to Greece to create a documentary based on what the professor described as very interesting results.

“Primarily, the media focused on the government’s efforts to get out the fires,” he said. “This was interesting to us because the media never covered anything on personal efforts to try and stop the spread of the fires, but we could see it being done all around us.”

Hanes identified a large disconnection between the media and society.

“The government seemed to have a lot of influence on what was being covered in the media,” he said.

The group’s research also found that the media seemed to suggest the government had the role of taking care of everything and that people weren’t really responsible for their own actions.

The following year, in August 2008, Lagos returned to his home country and was disappointed that there was no anniversary involving what had happened a year before.

“This was called Greece’s 9/11,” he said. “So much was lost and it was sad to see that there was no media coverage remembering what had happened.”

Returning from his trip, Lagos decided to do further research on the media in Greece. He hopes to publish a book on his findings and how the media plays a role in society’s responsibility for financial, economic and environmental issues in Greece.

Adam Gold, a friend of Lagos who is a documentarian and former marketing researcher for a major media company, decided to head up the project to make a film about Lagos and his students’ experiences and findings.

“Taso and I were talking a few months ago, and we both thought we could do a follow-up on what had happened there; that’s where the idea came,” Gold said.

Although the documentary is still in its preliminary production stages, Gold is hopeful about what he’ll find when in Greece.

He and Lagos will be going on a pre-production trip to Greece in January to scope out the land, people to interview and how and what to film.

“There is always room for great stories to be told,” Gold said. “One of the things we’ve learned is that personal stories are more interesting, especially if those stories are about people’s houses being burned; to me it’s quite compelling.”

Following the initial trip to Greece in January, Lagos plans to take another expedition in the spring to further his research and the interviews. He hopes to submit the finished documentary to the Sundance Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival.

Reach reporter Ben Schock at news@dailyuw.com.