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