Film: Following Sean

I love documentaries. The main reason is that I am a voyeur and enjoy catching glimpses of other peoples lives. There is no better documentary then one that relays the story of a life that I have no chance of glimpsing first hand. Such is the case with all historical documentaries, as we cannot turn the hands of time.
I don’t know much about San Fransisco’s Haight Ashbury neighbourhood from the 1960’s. What I do know about the counterculture central, I learned from music of that era. I have always been  fascinated with people who live for a cause. I am much too selfish for that.
I found this film in the Child Psychology section of my local library and think it is miscategorized.
In 1969 Ralph Arlyck, a young Jewish filmmaker made a short about a barefooted four year old boy who testifies that he eats and smokes ‘grass’, that ‘speed freaks’ occasionally live in his apartment and that the police ‘should be hurt’ because ‘they might bust him’.
Mr. Arlyck says in the film:

I was living in the Haight, and there was this wonderful, precocious, audacious four-year-old living upstairs from me. I was a film student at the time, and I needed a project, so I decided to film him.

What ensues after the short and thirty years later is Following Sean.

The first words out of Dr. J’s mouth when we finished the film were: "I would love to see the original short." Well the original short, as well as deleted scenes and interviews, are on the DVD version pictured above. If we had to do it over again we might have watched the 14 minute original Sean before watching the full version Following Sean.