following sean

Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck first met Sean while living as a graduate student in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood at the height of the 1960s.

The city was awash with the trappings of America's cultural revolution-the San Francisco State University campus flooded with cops in riot gear, the Haight filled with drifters and idealists, and, on the third floor of Arlyck's building, a come-one-come-all crashpad apartment. It was from this top floor commune that the precocious 4-year-old Sean would occasionally wander downstairs to visit and talk-and one day Arlyck turned on his camera.

Sean's casual commentary on everything from smoking pot to living with speed freaks was delivered in simple sincerity throughout the soon-to-be famous 15-minute film. This First Child of the notorious decade may have shaken the audience with his simple sentence- "Sure, I smoke pot"-but it was his barefoot impishness which would encapsulate the hope that lay in front of the nation: a promise of infinite possibility.

Thirty years, three generations, and a lifetime later, Arlyck has returned to San Francisco in search of who the adult Sean might have become. And what he finds, to his surprise, tells him as much about his own east-coast migration as it does about the Californian life he left behind-that the choices we're handed and the choices we make are, very often, quite odd bedfellows.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING

"Fascinating." (Variety)

"At the end of Ralph Arlyck's movie, I found myself touching the corners of my eyes and looking around to see if others were doing likewise. (They were.)"
-Leah Garchik, SF CHRONICLE

"Arlyck remains a soulful, skeptical observer of his own life and times; as for Sean, watch "Following Sean" and see for yourself. You won't be disappointed, and you will be deeply, quietly moved"
-Ann Hornaday, WASHINGTON POST

"A delicately woven, generation-spanning examination of family, idealism, and the classic question of nature versus nurture. The film is casual but never artless. More important, it’s never calculating or clichéd, either."
-Tricia Olszewski, WASHINGTON CITY PAPER

"Following Sean is an almost shapeless film. But it's clever enough to know that its multiple reflections eventually reveal something profound."
-Jeffrey M. Anderson, COMBUSTIBLE CELLULOID

"Underlying subtexts of idealism, utopianism, the power of fate, the interconnectivity of all life emerge...taking Arlyck's original rather small quest into much deeper philosophical territory."
-Les Wright, CULTUREVULTURE.NET

"An intimate and affecting documentary"
-John McMurtrie, SF CHRONICLE

"One of the unexpected pleasures of "Following Sean" is its understated reminder of the role that Jews played in San Francisco's progressive history."
-Michael Fox, JEWISH NEWS WEEKLY OF N. CALIFORNIA

"Without belaboring his narrative shaping, Arlyck asks big questions about life paths and philosophical drift. Most importantly, Sean remains a compelling and precocious character trapped in celluloid amber, both as a child and as an adult." - GROUCHO REVIEWS

"There are films that land on you without warning...and then the whirling starts." -Ciné Live

"An impressive subtelty...a totally unsettling document." -Rolling Stone

"Absolutely incredible" -Star Magazine

"A fascinating assesment of America" -Premiere