The Seattle Go Center presents the Seattle premiere of THE SURROUNDING GAME, a feature documentary about the ancient game of Go (also known as Weiqi or Baduk). The game is often considered the most elegant and complex game played by humans, and has recently received attention as DeepMind's AlphaGo became one of the first artificial intelligence programs to defeat some of the top human players.

THE SURROUNDING GAME follows the lives of three young Americans vying to become the first-ever Western professional players. Quirky, cerebral, and disillusioned with conventional views of success, they represent a new generation of players, on the doorstep of adulthood. As the competition intensifies and intricate patterns spill out across the board, the line between reality and imagination starts to blur. Their thoughts turn to anxieties about the future, and lead them on a journey through the game’s ancient past to ask what it means to live a meaningful life. Through an intimate portrait of these young players and interviews with the greatest Go masters of all time, the film explores the search for meaning that Go represents to its players, for whom the game is a distillation of consciousness itself.

Film website: https://www.surroundinggamemovie.com/

Seattle Go Center website: http://www.seattlego.org/

Doors: 7:00 PM
Introduction: 7:15 PM
Film: 7:30 PM
Runtime: 97 min