FEEL IT.STREAM
Kelvin Tong

Kelvin Tong

Directing

Biography

Known for his range and ability to traverse both mainstream movies and art-house cinema, Kelvin Tong embarked on his filmmaking journey in 1995 with Moveable Feast. The quirky short, co-directed with Jasmine Ng and Sandi Tan, about one man’s obsession with the rituals of eating, garnered a Special Mention at the 1996 Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival as well as the Best Short Film Award at the 1995 Singapore International Film Festival Silver Screen Awards. Moveable Feast was the first piece of Singapore cinema to be showcased at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. Kelvin Tong made his feature debut alongside co-director Jasmine Ng in 1999 with Eating Air, which represented Singapore extensively in numerous international film festivals. Kelvin Tong’s second feature – The Maid – was an atmospheric horror film based on the rituals and superstitions of the Chinese in Singapore. It broke box office records in Singapore and won the Asian Award at the 2006 European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation. In 2006, Kelvin Tong received Singapore’s highest national artistic award for youth – the Young Artist Award. Following The Maid, Kelvin Tong’s career took on a regional dimension. His third feature, Love Story (2006) was produced by Hong Kong screen legend Andy Lau. It took the Best Director Award at the 2006 Singapore International Film Festival and was chosen as the closing film at the 2006 Locarno International Film Festival. Kelvin Tong’s fourth feature – Rule #1 (2007) was a supernatural noir thriller shot in Hongkong. Returning to Singapore, Kelvin Tong made the thriller Kidnapper in 2009 and It’s A Great Great World in 2010.

Known For

Rule Number One
6.0

Rookie Sergeant Lee is injured in a shoot-out and is assigned to the dubious-sounding Miscellaneous Affairs Department (MAD). There, he is paired up with Inspector Wong, a jaded and alcoholic veteran who explains that MAD’s role is to answer supernatural calls. Wong explains MAD’s rule number one - there are no ghosts. For every seemingly inexplicable phenomenon, there is a corresponding scientific and rational explanation.

Rule Number One

2008
The Maid
5.6

Alone for the first time and away from her family in rural Philippines, Rosa Dimaano arrives in the cosmopolitan city state of Singapore to work as a maid. Her employers Mr and Mrs Teo runs a Chinese Teochew dialect opera troupe takes well to their new domestic help. So do their mentally disabled son, Ah Soon. In Chinese superstition, the seventh month of the lunar calendar is regarded as the month when the gates of hell open for forsaken spirits to walk the earth for 30 days. Unknown to Rosa, she arrives on the eve and her hell is about to begin.

The Maid

2005
The Offering
5.2

When young and successful reporter Jamie finds out that her sister has died in mysterious circumstances, she travels to Singapore to uncover the truth. There, she discovers multiple deaths linked to her sister's and must join forces with her sister's husband in order to defeat a demonic entity that is using new technology to complete an ancient mission.

The Offering

2016
Kidnapper
6.7

When taxi driver Ah Huat's son is kidnapped, he resorts to extreme measures to raise the $1,000,000 ransom. But when the kidnapper reneges on the exchange, Ah Huat takes the most extreme measure of all: he kidnaps the kidnapper's child.

Kidnapper

2010
Men in White
2.7

Four people from Singapore die on the same day and return to Earth as ghosts.

Men in White

2007
Dance Dance Dragon
N/A

Ah Long's father was desperate to have a son born in the year of the Dragon because his ancestors had decreed that only a "Dragon boy"could take over family's lion dance association, His mother instead gives birth to "Dragon girls" while Ah Long himself was born several seconds after the clock struck twelve, making him a "Snake baby", much to the disappointment of his father. At present time, Mother Long orays to the gods for blessings on her three children and pours out her desire for a grandchild. The oldest daughter Lucy, 48, is a spinster and can't find suitable work. The second daughter Ah Bee, 36, is a gambling addiction counselor who is tomboyish and was recently dumped by her boyfriend. The youngest and only son Ah Long is married but is terrified of children. Meanwhile up in heaven, the gods are growing sick and tired of hearing Mother Long's daily prayers for a grandchild and deliberate whether to grant Mother Long her wish....

Dance Dance Dragon

2012
Republic of Food
N/A

In a world where food has been outlawed, a small band of food lovers risks their skins to defy the authorities and feast on contraband food.

Republic of Food

2018
It's a Great, Great World!
6.4

It’s A Great Great World is set in Singapore’s legendary amusement park Great World, which was also affectionately known in Hokkien as Tua Seh Kai or 大世界. Spanning the 1940s to the present day, the film tells the stories of a multitude of characters who lived, worked, played, sang, danced and fell in love in Great World.

It's a Great, Great World!

2011
7 Letters
6.5

An emotive anthology by seven of Singapore's most illustrious filmmakers, celebrating SG50 through the lives and stories of Singaporeans. Directed by Eric Khoo, Jack Neo, K. Rajagopal, Royston Tan, Tan Pin Pin, Boo Junfeng, Kelvin Tong.

7 Letters

2015
Eating Air
7.2

A romance between two opposites, Eating Air follows the lives of two teenagers during the hottest month in the history of Singapore. For Boy, breaking into bridal shops under the moonlight is as wildly exciting as Girl on her first motorcycle spin through the binding fluorescent tunnels of the CTE. About the joys and pangs of teenage love, Eating Air seeks the delirious madness that makes 18-year-olds invincible to low fuels, fists and oil-puddles on the road.

Eating Air

1999
Singapore Cinema: Between Takes
N/A

From Crazy Rich Asians (2018) to 12 Storeys (1997) to Sumpah Pontianak (The Curse of Pontianak) (1957), Singapore’s film industry is a diverse one and its evolution is nothing short of colourful. Recollecting Singapore’s famed studios in the 1950s to uncovering new waves of filmmakers in 90s and into today’s digital revolution, Singapore Cinema: Between Takes provides an insight into the rich history, and culture of Singapore films and its industry through candid reflections of filmmakers and content creators.

Singapore Cinema: Between Takes

2018
Confinement
N/A

Wang Si Ling, a pregnant painter who moves into her dream home and hires a confinement nanny after winning an award. As Si Ling begins her one month in confinement, inexplicable incidents start mounting in the house, threatening both her and her baby.

Confinement

2023
1942
3.2

On the 60th anniversary of World War II, Boku Films presents 1942, a suspenseful horror movie set against an unforgettable war. The year is 1942. The setting - Malaya.

1942

2005
Love Story
6.0

A theatre usher looks for love and finds it in a library book. A cop chases a killer only to wind up at the end of her own gun. A pulp-romance writer confuses fact with fiction and learns that true love comes only after a great loss. The stories that flows from this ebb of desire to find true love leads us various stories that will be amalgam of time, space, consequences and fact and fiction often are not easily identifiable.

Love Story

2006
Beijing, Mumbai, Tampines
N/A

A group of quarrelsome recruits endures a gruelling week of training. Will they get to book out?

Beijing, Mumbai, Tampines

2017
No image
7.0

Narrated by a teenage boy, he brings us through to the various sights, sounds and characters ranging from a coffeeshop, to a Chinese wedding dinner in a traditional Chinese restaurant.

Moveable Feast

1996
A Year of No Significance
7.0

Set in Singapore in 1979, A Year Of No Significance chronicles the gradual disintegration of a middle-aged architect as changes rock the 45th year of his life. Sidelined in the office because of his inability to speak English, Lim Cheng Soon is cut further adrift when his wife leaves him inexplicably one day. His elderly father moves in, forcing him to confront the fact that the former has always preferred his younger brother. Robbed of his identities as architect, husband and son, Cheng Soon struggles in the dusk of his life, raging against the dying light.

A Year of No Significance

2023