All boys. All boarding. Grades 9-12.
Michael Deng ’18 Uses Film to Serve
Michael Deng ’18 spent August 2016 in the mountainous region of Liangshan in Sichuan province, creating a beautiful documentary film called Under the Windhorse. In it, he records the story of a college student who returns from studying in Beijing to her home region to teach Chinese in a remote village. China’s Liangshan Mountains are home to Tibetan people whose geographical isolation limits their educational and career opportunities. Michael screened his film for the student body of Woodberry Forest School on April 26, 2017.
This was Michael’s second summer working with the Siyu Harmony Society, China’s largest philanthropic organization. Under the Windhorse and his 2015 film Family Under the Roof are part of the organization’s effort to produce documentaries that, as Michael says, “reflect the authentic lives of the local families of Liangshan, draw attention from the outside world, and help the kids there connect with the bigger world by studying and working in the cities.”
Michael recruited a team of videographers and technicians for the three-week shoot. They met for several days in Beijing and then traveled to Gongbuka village, Kangding, Sichuan, where they spent two weeks filming. Inspired by the theme of returning home in a novel he read in his Woodberry English class, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Michael located a young Tibetan college student at Minzu University in Beijing. He documented her return to her home region to teach Mandarin Chinese to children, focusing on her relationship with a young student, Dan Tong.
Michael has been making films since he was twelve years old when he traveled with his family to California to attend a weeklong filmmaking camp. Michael's first short documentary Family Under the Roof was released by the Children's Channel of China Central Television in 2016; it won two best documentary awards in the US and was screeed at major film festivals such as Austin, Long Beach Indie, and CICFF. “These positive outcomes motivated me to continue to work on the project,” Michael says. “I wanted to keep up the effort of helping children in the Liangshan Mountains.”
Woodberry Forest School’s Class of 2008 Community Service grant helped Michael rent and purchase the equipment he needed to produce his film. The grant was established by parents and grandparents of the Class of 2008 as a gift to the school. The program enhances Woodberry’s commitment to service learning by providing resources for students who wish to spearhead a service project during the school year or the summer.
View Under the Windhorse and Family Under the Roof.
Woodberry Forest School is an exceptional private school community for high school boys in grades nine through twelve. It is one of the top boarding schools in the United States and one of the only all-boys, all-boarding schools in the country.
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