Ralph Arlyck has produced and directed more than a dozen prize-winning, independent films, which have played theatrically in the US and Europe and have appeared on PBS, the BBC, screened at the White House, and have been invited to festivals worldwide, including Sundance, New York, London, and Sydney. Among these are Sean, the '69 cult-classic about a precocious and charming 4-year-old living in Haight Ashbury, (a film which forms the baseline for his documentary feature, Following Sean, Current Events, an examination of the ways people do (or do not) respond to the stream of horrific events on the nightly news, the highly-acclaimed Godzilla Meets Mona Lisa, a whimsical tour of Paris' controversial Pompidou Center museum, and An Acquired Taste, a wry look at American culture's obsession with success -- considered a classic of independent cinema and personal filmmaking, and called by Vincent Canby in the New York Times, "...a delight...a funny, loving movie."
Throughout his career, Arlyck has also played a key advocacy role for American independent producers, testifying twice in Congress and once before the Carnegie Commission on the role of independents in public television. He was centrally involved in legislation which first recognized independents as an important force within that system. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Writer and critic Phillip Lopate, in "In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film," says "To my knowledge, Ralph Arlyck is, besides Chris Marker, the one consistent essay filmmaker."