Film Recommendation

I've forgotten how I first heard of it, but I put Following Sean on my Netflix queue months ago. It showed up this week and I just finished watching it.

Following Sean is a documentary by filmmaker Ralph Arlyck. In 1969, while a film student at San Francisco State, he made a short film, Sean, about a four-year old boy who lived upstairs from Arlyck in an apartment house in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district.

He was an engaging little boy, living in an apartment with his parents, siblings, and a shifting cast of characters who drifted in and out of his home in the middle of the San Francisco hippie scene. He claimed to hate the police and to have smoked pot. There were charming scenes of the barefoot charmer running through the streets of the Haight.

27 years later, the filmmaker returned to California and found Sean and his parents, and in the film we learn what happened to Sean since 1969. Sean and his parents, grandparents and one sibling made themselves available for the film. It is a fascinating exploration of one family over several generations of bankers and communists, hippies and suburbanites, free spirits and hard workers. Arlyck explores some of the parallels between Sean's family and his own in the process, and we watch his own sons grow up as we watch Sean's little boy, Alex, become as endearing a four-year old as was his father.

Put it on your list of films to watch. It's a keeper.