Making Films In Latvia - First Motion

lighting we are introduced to all of the household. The sequence of portraits is closed
by lame Jurks who winks to the audience...
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Jānis Streičs is considered probably the most important film director in
Latvian national culture during the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Streičs’ constant directions
(the first one – Shoot Instead of Me/Šauj manā vietā, 1970) coincided with the golden
age of Latvian filmmaking industry. After the release of his film My Friend – A Light-
Minded Man (Mans draugs – nenopietns cilvēks, 1975), Streičs became a well-
acknowledged master by professionals and vast audiences, he efficiently used the
means of expression canonized in classical cinema and nearly fulfilled the requests of
the socialist art system to produce pleasant, life-witnessing realistic stories with a
certain dose of didactics. However, after becoming a system genius, Jānis Streičs
managed to learn how to subjugate this system, slowly but tenaciously, growing far
beyond it and becoming an Author. Jānis Streičs is the only director who
accomplished to build a relatively stable bridge from centralized cinema system to
the splintered filmmaking style of the renewed Latvian Republic, consequently
keeping up with developing his own style and refining his subjects.
Compared to Hollywood classical cinema, Jānis Streičs can be likened to
Frank Capra whose name has an enormous echo in American culture and has become
a unique mark of national consciousness and personal insight. In 1981, Jānis Streičs
said: ”It seems that I have constantly moved in the same direction. Since My Friend –
A Light-Minded Man my mind is occupied with one issue – our Latvian self-
manifestation on the big screen.”
Limousine in the Colour of a Midsummer Night (Limuzīns JāĦu nakts krāsā,
1981) became the most essential national film by Jānis Streičs. The film itself has
now grown into a national myth, the situations and texts present in the film have
become a part of national folklore just like Casablanca in American culture. In fact,
the film is a valuable metaphysical research on nation’s mentality, a kind of
etnography where many ethnically dominating archetypes are used. In Limousine, just
like in Noah’s Ark, many codes intrinsic to Latvian culture are assembled, but those,
as in a myth, manifest not as a creative narration by author’s hand, but as a real world
where every object labels itself and is easily recognizible. Limousine’s mythology has
universal roots but local characteristics: specific signs of space and time, as well as
movement into profundity – historically and geographically created communities deep
within one’s consciousness. The films captures and at the same time communicates