Rolling with the punches

Even as she peers deeply into the raging torrent flooding the gloomy streets outside the café where we are meeting, there is nothing poignant about Poh Si Teng. When the award-winning documentary producer recalls the many times she has supported the marginalised through her various films across news outlets and major networks, she has this unexpected sprightliness twinkling in her eye. And then, as our conversation continues, one realises it is the light of kinship — the profound empathy and emotion from her own struggles with injustice that allow her to connect with those whose voices she uplifts, and the intrinsic strength to spark conversations and address the unfairness that dwells in every corner of our world.

There are many formative moments she can offer when we ask what it was that drew her to journalism, but one stands head and shoulders above them all. “I wanted to experience lives other than my own,” says the avid storyteller. “With a good story, you remember how you feel. And if you want to shift human behaviour, politics and culture, you’re going to have to make people feel. That’s what I love about movies and documentary filmmaking.”

Having played the roles of writer, cameraperson, director, producer and studio executive — just to name a few — the Malaysian-born, US-based veteran has practically done it all en route to working with the industry’s global heavyweights. She was most recently honoured with the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking as an executive producer on the disability romcom Patrice: The Movie (2024), and has earned multiple nominations, including for her work with The New York Times, Al Jazeera and short film St Louis Superman (2019). Now, she sits down with Options to tell her own tale, from her early days facing inequality to learning the ropes abroad and platforming persecuted communities.

See also: A celebration of taste and technology: Why V-ZUG is the choice for the festive kitchen

North star

Born in Penang in the mid-1980s, Teng spent her first 10 years in George Town, living above her father’s motorcycle spare parts shop on Noordin Street with her grandparents and siblings. “It was a modest kind of life, and I had a very loving family,” she reminisces.

When she moved to Perai and attended school in Butterworth, a young Teng began to intuit small yet glaring discrepancies between herself and those around her, emblems of a wider social truth that she would carry well into adulthood. “It’s amazing what children know and understand about class, even at a very young age. A lot of things colour how you see the world,” she notes. “What was good about Malaysia was that we all went to public school — there were rich kids, working class kids and poor kids all in the same compound. But that also showed what you didn’t have. I was embarrassed that my family did not have money and I tried to hide it. All these things were hanging over my head, and it felt very difficult for a 10-year-old to break through.”

See also: Pascal Raffy

That scarlet letter felt impossible to shake off, even through secondary and tertiary education. Teng still cannot say it has left her. “It shaped how I saw and see things now. How could I rise? How was I going to make something of myself? You internalise these things when you have very little money.”

The island started to seem too small for someone seeking bigger opportunities for mobility. But even after performing well in her SPM exams and attaining a scholarship to Taylor’s College in Kuala Lumpur, she continued to struggle with the looming awareness of her race, gender and socioeconomic circumstances. A particular episode during her time at Taylor’s taught her that she could use her voice to externalise these frustrations and help others going through the same thing. “I lived in an apartment in Sunway with four or five other students, and it overlooked a housing settlement. I distinctly remember people getting evicted, dragged out of their homes, bulldozers coming in … that was really sad. Being so naïve back then, I thought,
‘Maybe someone should do a story about this. It’s horrible.'

“Of course, nothing ever happened and I don’t recall any article ever came of it, but it made me realise that I wanted to write about these things.” It was easy to see the parallels between how she had grown up and what others were being subjected to. “Knowing you don’t have what others have, and then others — intentionally or unintentionally — making you feel small to remind you that you don’t have it, is a very horrible feeling. That’s something that has always driven me,” says Teng. Her deep connection to the experiences of others, combined with her time with a local journalism training programme for secondary school students, awoke her to the fact that telling stories could serve as both a career she could enjoy and a medium for creating positive change.

Teng (centre) with the St Louis Superman team at the Oscars ceremony in 2020

Finding freedom

Eventually, her parents saved enough for Teng to study journalism at San Francisco State University through a twinning programme, an opportunity she was hell-bent on making the most of despite being a cash-strapped foreign student. The grass seemed greener in the land of the free, and for a young writer still trying to explore the power of her words, that freedom was important. “When I was growing up, the Internal Security Act was still around. People were still getting incarcerated without trial for extended periods of time. There were laws that could be used to persecute you. It was quite hard to find the right language, and especially when still trying to navigate that space."

For more lifestyle, arts and fashion trends, click here for Options Section

Her first go at her own publication was a political and pop culture magazine in 2005 called theCICAK, created during her American university days in collaboration with a friend, venture capitalist Khailee Ng. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re asking me about this! This is foundational to who I became,” she laughs. “It was during the burst of blogs. We thought of setting up this website where young Malaysians all over the world could write about sex, religion, politics — everything you should not write about — and we would help them edit their pieces.” The platform ran for three years and was highly popular, she adds proudly.

Although all she knew about the US back then was primarily assumptions, it beat the known threat of censorship laws at home, or so she thought. In reality, the US had its own share of pain points. The immigrant navigating very white newsrooms quickly learnt about the race and power dynamics that flowed through the American media industry. Teng credits the Black, Latina and indigenous co-workers across her five internships who guided and mentored her along the way. After a six-month stint as a cameraperson for The Associated Press, she returned to Malaysia to make her first movie in Chow Kit — Pecah Lobang (2008) — a 30-minute documentary about Muslim transgender sex workers.

Teng worked on various news packages before moving to India, where she freelanced for five years, writing for The Wall Street Journal and shooting documentaries before producing for The New York Times, which then sponsored her visa and moved her back to the US. She would later produce for Al Jazeera on BAFTA-qualified and Oscar-nominated projects, before joining ABC News Studios as an executive and the International Documentary Association as grants director. Today, she produces non-fiction feature documentaries and unscripted series for the US and global majority markets with her company, Tiny Boxer Films.

Into focus

The challenging negotiation of authenticity and rhetoric in any documentary draws its fair share of critical discourse, particularly relating to the surrounding power play between the subject and the filmmaker. Who gets to tell the story of a community? How are they portrayed? Where does the use of privilege to raise the voices of the unheard end, and the co-opting of another group’s lives begin?

“A big part of embarking into a world that’s not your own is knowing you could be very wrong. So, be careful and listen,” says Teng. “But even before that comes the self. You have faced some kind of inequity and discrimination before. You know how horrible that feels. Empathy and rage should be expansive: What are you going to do about it?”

For her, this has meant extending the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that have followed her to the struggles of those who have had their race, gender, nationality, disability or sexual identity held against them. “There has to come a point where you need to relate what you’ve gone through to other people. Otherwise, it’s very self-indulgent. I’m conscious about that. ‘Oh, woe is me’ — that’s nonsense,” she shrugs.

The responsibility of platforming a minority is a grave one, and Teng does not mince her words when stressing that wishful thinking is often not enough, and should never be an excuse for harming those one is trying to help. Take Jennie Livingston’s famous and hotly discussed 1991 work Paris is Burning, which interviewed queer individuals of colour in New York City’s ballroom scene: While Livingston’s film intended to shine a light on a vibrant and often discriminated group of individuals, some, including American author bell hooks, questioned the voyeuristic implications associated with a white woman profiting off a culture not her own. Several performers who appeared in the documentary gained nothing from its commercial success (their attempts to sue Livingston failed), exacerbating the issue of who truly benefited from the production.

“A lot of people, when they do that, they say ‘It wasn’t my intent’. Well, the damage is still the same whether or not it was intended,” says Teng. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Perhaps the idea of getting it all “correct” has no place in the precarious world of documentaries, but where some find themselves paralysed by the prospect of perfect portrayals, it is in facing the potentially provocative that Teng knows her work is worth doing. “If there’s a topic that makes me uncomfortable, then I run towards it. It’s like a fire burning in your belly, this discomfort that you could be wrong, but it’s so exciting to dive into that world. That’s how you know you’ve touched something!”

No single person can comprehend every aspect of human identity, and that is what teams are for. Teng deliberately pauses us to pull up photos of the people who helped create St Louis Superman attending the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020 — a beautifully diverse group, many in traditional garb, she points out enthusiastically. “When you’re making a film, you’d better make sure your team is able to cover all the gaps in your knowledge so everyone has a certain lens and experience to complement yours. As one person, you only have a limited amount of perspective. You need to realise that the most important things are the views you don’t have. Otherwise, you could do some pretty bad things to a community,” she says. She arrives at every project with the understanding that she does not know enough. When she leaves, it is with the humility to admit she still knows nothing, but also with new friends, allies and language that grant her that extra bit of confidence to navigate the world.

It was that full trust in the creatives around her that motivated Teng to take a leap of faith with Patrice. “The director and producers had already been working on it for several years. It was a vérité film, and they wanted it to be both following people in unfolding scenes and partly recreations of the main participant’s past,” she says. Patrice explores the lives of a disabled interracial couple, Patrice Jetter and Garry Wickham, who wish to get married but will lose their benefits if they do so in the US. Throughout the movie, Wes Anderson-esque recreations of Jetter’s life are played out by child actors, a risky concept and investment that put off other executives, but that Teng fell in love with. “Anything worth something has risk. I remember telling my bosses, if this doesn’t do well, I’ll quit my job. I was that confident!”

Of course, it all paid off. The film was exceptionally well-received and drew attention to the challenges of marriage equity for disabled individuals, but the validation that came from the Emmy was only one part of why it mattered to Teng. “Awards are an opportunity to say something, to push a subject or important matter close to your heart or that people should be focusing on to the fore,” she stresses. One hopes the intent behind documentary filmmaking is linked to curiosity and social justice, she says, and while awards themselves serve as a meaningful affirmation, “what you use it for is more important”. In an Instagram post related to her win, she wrote on the relevance of disability rights to the number of children who had been permanently disabled as a result of the genocide in Gaza: “Behind each number is a child, a family, an entire world that has been shattered. Honouring the spirit of this award means standing with those children and their families. It is fighting for their right to live fully, freely and with dignity.”

Tomorrow’s tale

The last photo Teng shows us from the Emmys is of her four-year-old daughter next to the prized statuette. “This was the best picture of the night,” the mother smiles fondly, remarking how the angel figurine is nearly as big as her little girl.

Just as she found herself saddled with the difficult realities of her social standing as a youth, she is beginning to notice her own child identifying notions of justice at a tender age.

“I can already see certain things about her that are so like me that it’s scary! She’s obsessed with fairness, and the people who are don’t live an easy life,” she says. “But I’m proud of her, she’s so thoughtful. I just want her to do what makes her happy.”

While the family of three live in New York, Teng tries to visit Malaysia once a year, more often than not making a beeline for Penang to see her parents. “When I’m back, I eat — well. I enjoy spending time with my mum and dad. They’re really humble.” She used to wonder if they understood or approved of her work, but in typical Asian parent fashion, the signs of pride revealed themselves in the usual (indirect) ways. “If I send my father photos from a ceremony, he’ll take like 20 of them to post on Facebook — multiple times! He’s not going to call me and say ‘I’m proud of you’, but I know he is,” she grins.

Teng also makes a point to keep up with the local film scene through her friends, namely Anna Har and Brenda Danker of Freedom Film Festival. “When it comes to individuals and entities that really put their weight into this, it’s people like those who run non-profit arts organisations like the Five Arts Centre and Freedom Film Festival. They have really [made] outsized contributions to Malaysian society. I hope the locals and government can support organisations like these because they really create a space for society to think.”

Turning back to the US, times are only growing tougher: the industry is haemorrhaging talent and deliberate efforts are being made to defund public media. Teng adds: “I have had the great privilege of being able to dip into multiple worlds. I’m not beholden to the market or funders.”

The same cannot be said of emerging talents, she acknowledges. “I don’t envy young people coming up — they’re so brave, they have so many things stacked against them.” Between the realities of economic ruin, climate change and the endless horrors of our political landscapes, things are “not great”, to say the least. “In any decade, it has always been hard to make political art. If you want to go down this path, life isn’t going to be easy. You learn to accept that a lot of things are not in your hands.”

One might interpret this as a contradiction, a confession that art must be faced with its own limits when confronted with the cruel and domineering truth that those in power are the ones who dictate our circumstances. Yet, her sober statement — “Nothing is forever” — carries a glimmer of hope for tackling the seemingly unturnable tides of modern strife. “If it doesn’t work out, you adapt. For me, if I don’t get a certain grant, I change strategies. I grew up with very little, and if it ends, it ends. I’ve already lived a very full, gratifying life beyond my wildest dreams — me, a Penang girl! If it dries up, I’ll do something else. But right now, this is fun.”