We are experiencing intermittent technical difficulties with our ticketing system and website. Please go directly to goelevent.com to search for showtimes and purchase passes and tickets.

Get Tickets

Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation

Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation

USA | 2023 | 84 min. | Ward Serrill

April 21, 2024

Seattle Premiere and Special Event

Director Ward Serrill and Red Pine scheduled to attend. Event features: a Director Q&A, conversation with Red Pine - moderated by Shin Yu Pai, Civic Poet of Seattle, and musical performance by Spring Cheng. Book signing follows.


A master of ancient Chinese poetry and the search for a lost tradition. Bill Porter, who goes by the pen name Red Pine, is recognized as a living gateway to ageless Chinese history and culture. He has published over thirty books, including Road to Heaven, his quest to find hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains that reignited a movement in modern China to seek enlightenment through poetry and mountain solitude.

A Co-Presentation with SIFF, Elliott Bay Book Company, Asia Society Seattle, and Copper Canyon Press.

SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.

Related Event

Seattle Premiere: Dancing with the Dead - Red Pine and the Art of Translation

Director Ward Serrill and Red Pine scheduled to attend. Event features a Director Q&A, conversation with Red Pine - moderated by Shin Yu Pai, Civic Poet of Seattle, book signing, and musical performance by Spring Cheng.

The film follows Bill’s adventures as a child of a bank robber, raised in a gilded household, who turned his back on American devotion to materialism and went off to live in monasteries and mountains in Taiwan. He pursued a fascination with Buddhism and Chinese poetry and is renowned around the world as an expert of Chinese poetry translation.

  • Director: Ward Serrill
  • Principal Cast: Bill Porter, Spring Cheng
  • Country: USA
  • Year: 2023
  • Running Time: 84 min.
  • Language: English, Chinese