Following Sean
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Following Sean |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ralph Arlyck |
| script | Ralph Arlyck |
| production | Ralph Arlyck, Malcolm Pullinger |
| music | Eric Neveux |
| camera | Ralph Arlyck |
| cut | Malcolm Pullinger |
| occupation | |
| |
Following Sean is a documentary by US filmmaker Ralph Arlyck from 2005, the focus of which is Arlyck's 1969 short film Sean .
Background of the film
Following Sean introduces Sean Farell, whom Arlyck portrayed in 1966 in San Francisco's hippie neighborhood, Haight-Ashbury . Ralph Arlyck, who saw himself on the fringes of this scene, “could not identify with the advocates of the free life. He was more of an observer than a revolutionary and used his camera to document life around him. The visits from Sean, who lived in his house, inspired Ralph to make a short film about the little rascal who dashed barefoot through Haight Ashbury because he found shoes scary and was afraid of the speed freaks ”.
In this fifteen-minute work, which Arlyck produced as part of his film studies at Colgate University , he showed four-year-old Sean Farrell on his forays through the neighborhood and sitting on the sofa as an interviewee. In response to Arlykc's questions, he expresses his childlike opinions on marijuana, the speed freaks , police operations and the lifestyle of the people around him. Arlyck assembled his filmic portraits of the hippie culture of the time into these interview sequences ; In the off, he also tells the rest of the story of the film after he left San Francisco himself.
Sean's revealing accounts of his personal stoner experiences made the documentary filmmaker known in one fell swoop; the film saw a performance in the White House and was apostrophized by the public as a document of the moral decline of the then United States.
The finished film, entitled Sean, was a great success and was shown at many festivals and in cinemas. Even François Truffaut commented appreciatively on Arlyck's film ( Sean's truly a kid of our modern times ) when it was screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and instantly ennobled him as a film artist.
25 years later, Ralph Arlyck, who has long since moved away from San Francisco and is a filmmaker, remembered Sean and their time together. Finally he asks himself what has become of the little boy and tries to find him, meets his parents and finally Sean himself. After the first tentative contacts, a friendship develops again between Sean and Ralph and a new one develops over the next ten years Film that portrays Sean's everyday life, ending when Sean's son Alex is four years old.
Plot and themes of the film
In 1969, film student Ralph Arlyck lived in a small apartment on Cole Street San Francisco; his neighbors are Janis Joplin , Charles Manson and little Sean Farrell with his family. His parents are dropouts who turn their apartment, two floors above Arlyck, into a hot spot. Sean is four years old, visits Ralph regularly and tells him about his forays and his approach to life. “Sean's parents were hippies. They gave him all the freedom and didn't mind if Sean smoked a joint. "
The director talks far more from the off about himself than about Sean - even if he tracks down Sean in the early 1990s, who is now in his 30s, and even if he accompanies his wedding to a young Russian woman and the birth of his son - it is always his own past, his relationship with his parents and the conflicting relationship with that culture of free love that he reported so fascinatedly in his original Sean documentary that is discussed here. The filmmaker's voice speaks continuously from the off; it tells of how the director moved to Haight-Ashbury as a young man, how he met Sean and his parents and how he was both attracted and repelled by the flair of the time.
Supporting characters in the film are the members of Sean's family, his father Johnny Farrell, who left his banker family in the late 1950s, his wife Susie, who came from a family of members of the Communist Party; Finally, Arlyck's own wife, Elisabeth Cardonne, a young French woman whom he met in Haight Ashbury, and her two sons.
A secondary strand to the plot portrays Sean's grandparents who were important trade unionists and members of the Communist Party in the 1950s. Archie Brown protested his treatment in front of the Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco. Another side issue is the tension that can arise in transcultural marriages.
Criticism
Katja Silberzahn wrote in documentarfilm.info :
- “Following Sean is a film about the search for identity, comparing different ways of life and clearing up prejudices against the infantile generation of hippies and their children. Arlyck Seans lovingly reconstructs, but also his own past, trying to find answers and conclusions about past lifestyles and decisions made. How did we become the person we are? What has influenced us? Arlyck still owes an answer, but he leaves no doubt about the character of his own family. "
Benjamin Happel wrote in film reviews :
- “ Following Sean is such a very personal film [...] that tries, at least on the surface, to pretend objectivity. The private that always resonates here is strength and weakness at the same time. It makes the characters and places more interesting knowing that they are connected to this person and this voice, but it also makes the statements the film makes far more vulnerable - after all, it's just an individual speaking comes [...]. "
Cheryl Eddy wrote in the San Francisco Bay Guardian :
- “When [Sean's father] Johnny looks at his overworked son, he says: He's not as free as he once was . What is certainly true (if only because Sean is now wearing shoes), his statement reflects the path of all those involved in the documentary: Johnny, who just broke his foot, but who never threw his ideals from the 1960s overboard; the Commune-and-Guru product Sean, who is eager to walk a very pragmatic path in life; and Arlyck himself, who halfway through the film says about his self-chosen career that it is more like a blank page than a declaration of freedom . Fortunately, Following Sean - who lets the air of San Francisco's legendary era without judgment and an extraordinary look at a relatively ordinary story - is anything but a blank sheet. "
Soundtrack of the film
For the film u. a. Music selected from San Francisco, such as by Kelley Stoltz , Joanna Newsom and Coachwhips .
Web links
- Web presence
- Following Sean at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- POV following Sean on PBS
- Portrait and interview at San Francisco Bay Guardian.com