The Feast of St John

Urbanization led to problems related to recreational time and changes in the traditional nature of the midsummer holiday. Peeter Linnap once wrote that ST. John’s Day was a suprisingly bold film for its time. „Sööt showed us vividly how the ancient summer holiday of Estonians was, already in the 1970s, nothing more than amorphous bacchanal in a bucolic setting, a reason simply to get loaded. In parallel we see another thread develop in this film, which practically guarantees that it is interesting – taking a look at how our neighbouring people interpret our national ritual. This was a quite successful act of subversion performed by Sööt, deflating the sense of piety and haughty self-worth of Estonians, and showing how Estonians had actually mutated into homo soviectus“.

Award, Estonian SSR Film Festival (USSR), 1980, Best Documentary.
Participation, Nyon International Documentary Film Festival (Switzerland), 1987, Retrospective.
Participation, BERLINALE - Berlin International Film Festival (Germany), 1988, Programme: Panorama.
Participation, Estonian Film Days (Estonia), 2009.
Participation, Antarctic Short, Documentary and Animation Film Festival (Queen Maud Land, Antarctica), 2011-2012.
Participation, DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival (Finland), 2012, Programme: 100 years of Estonian Film.
Participation, Etats généraux du film documentaire (Lussas, France), 2012, Programme: Doc History: The Baltic States.