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starz docnight - following sean - THURSDAY, JUNE 7

It’s been almost 40 years since the flower children were running around the streets of San Francisco with flowers in their hair. The camera has always been shown on the psychedelic streets of the Haight Ashbury district and the people of that time, turning society on their ear. But what about the actual children of those flower children?

Thursday, Starz FilmCenter and Denver Post’s Lisa Kennedy will host the monthly DocNight series, which will feature Following Sean, a documentary film by Ralph Arlyck and his young, four year-old neighbor at that time. The fifteen minute black and white film, originally titled Sean, shines with the bright and angelic face of Sean, who lived in from upstairs from Arlyck. You see him frolicking about the street barefoot and providing the young filmmaker with adult-like candor about smoking pot and other aspects of his lifestyle in this commune style apartment in San Francisco.

“My neighbors—radical medical students on the second floor, and Sean’s family above them on the third, in a wild crashpad with a constant stream of people coming and going—were the equivalent of revolutionary vanguards. And in the midst of it all was this precocious four-year-old, Sean,” recalls Arlyck.

Decades later, Arlyck returns to San Francisco from New York in search of Sean and to see how the boy transformed into a man. The inspiration for the film’s title, Arlyck did find and following Sean in the mid-90s, continuing to not only film him until 2003, but learn just how much each of their lives ran in parallel, even though years and distance separated them.

Ralph Arlyck will make an appearance at the Starz filming and the reception that follows at Slim 7, located at 1443 Larimer Square #010 (enter through the alley between Larimer and Market Street). A portion of the proceeds from the reception will be generously donated to Denver Film Society by Slim 7.

To purchase tickets visit www.denverfilm.org.
For more information on the film visit www.followingsean.com.

-Kim Owens, June 6, 2007