Latvian film director and screenwriter Janis Streichs has passed away at the age of 89, confirmed the National Film Center.
According to the website enciklopedija.lv, Streichs was born on September 26, 1936, in Latgale. He spent his childhood in Kurzeme, near Sabile, but in January 1941, the family returned to the Preili region.
After attending the Rezekne Pedagogical School and serving three years in the military in the Voronezh region, he enrolled in the directing department of the theater faculty at the Latvian Conservatory, graduating in 1963. From that year, his permanent workplace became the Riga Film Studio, where he worked until 1991.
Streichs' creative legacy includes more than 20 feature films, almost half of which he wrote the screenplay for. The 1981 feature film "The Limousine of the Night Color Ligo" is included in the Cultural Canon of Latvia. For the film "Child of Man," Streichs received the Grand Prize at the International Author's Film Festival in San Remo and the Vatican award "Beato Angelico for Europe." He became the first representative of Latvia to receive this award. He won the "Great Kristaps" award for Best Film of the Year three times, as well as the same award for his contribution to cinema.
Streichs was also a public figure. In 1986, his speech at the Congress of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR in Moscow contributed to the holding of the first democratic elections in creative unions. He was also the chairman of the Union of Cinematographers of Latvia, the chairman of the Riga Latvian Society, and an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he was awarded the Order of the Three Stars III class.
In recent years, Streichs lived in Lithuania, in the city of Viesejai, where he continued to paint and foster cooperation between Latvian and Lithuanian artists. He was an honorary citizen of Preili, Rezekne, and Viesejai.
