Shana Kleiner
a virtual exhibit of work by the 2020 MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute Fellows
ah, Teng is a poetic documentary set in a house in suburban New Jersey where Teng Teng, a mother of two daughters, has stage four breast cancer. On September 10th 2019, her daughters found out about the cancer –– and the fact that it has spread to almost every organ: liver, lung, bone, brain, etc. She died on May 27th, 2020. Shot from February 2020 to May 2020, ah, Teng follows Dina, the older sister as she lives in the house full-time and cares her mother, and Shana, the younger sister, who travels back-and-forth between home and college to be with her mother. ah, Teng is directed and created by Shana Kleiner, Teng Teng’s youngest daughter, and reveals an intimate first-person perspective of what it looks like and feels like to see her mother die. What it means to navigate loss, and how grieving has implicated the spaces that she calls home.
graduated from Skidmore in Spring 2020 and is a current MSW candidate at the Columbia School of Social Work, where she is focusing her studies on contemporary social issues and social work within digital media. ah, Teng was her first time filming anything and she plans to continue to explore grief, motherhood, and the body with experimental film in her free time. She is currently looking forward to continuing doing work surrounding restorative justice, and is living at home in New Jersey with her sister Dina.
Work of the Fellows * Work of the Institute * Exhibition Description
