Following Sean

Documentary makers have often returned to an earlier subject, to see how things were different many years later. But few film makers had such a wonderful subject as Ralph Arlyck did in the short film Sean. And they certainly didn’t have such wonderful old material. Arlyck made Sean in 1969. The short about the four-year-old boy Sean was a scandal hit. The precocious blond boy was thought shocking. Sean lived in a commune in San Francisco and Arlyck was his downstairs neighbour. Sean regularly came to visit and always had something to say about his strange life, coloured by drugs. Arlyck decided to record these conversations one day and the clear black & white film became a minor classic. In Following Sean, the film maker shows the old material again, and it has lost none of its amazing power. The director wondered how Sean would be getting on 35 years later and tracked him down – no easy task. Sean’s grandfather was a convinced communist; years later he is still a convinced hippie, who tills his own organic ground. Hippie child Sean, however, turns out to have chosen a life in the suburbs. And he doesn’t regret it, even if he doesn’t have much faith in the world. Parallel to the life of Sean, the film maker tells his autobiographical story – so Following Sean is not only about one life, but also about a whole generation. (GjZ)