Itim (The Rites of May) (1976)

Year: 1976 Director: Mike De Leon Language: Filipino; English subtitles Country: Philippines Runtime: 107 min Rating: NC16 Synopsis Though he has self-deprecatingly called it “a ghost story by a first-time and untested director from a wealthy family,” Mike De Leon’s Itim is one of the most remarkable debuts in cinema history. A major discovery when it was presented in a new digital restoration at Cannes 2022, the film expresses De Leon’s lifelong fears about “the dark side of our culture”: the Spanish colonial legacies of superstition and antiscience in his native Philippines. De Leon recalls, “Itim is about a young man (Tommy Abuel) who visits his hometown during the Holy Week to take photographs for his magazine and visit his paralyzed father. While shooting photos of a pasyon (a poetic recitation, in song, of the Passion of Christ), he encounters Teresa, the young girl possessed by her dead sister’s spirit in the séance that opens the film. Although the film’s protagonist is the girl played by newcomer Charo Santos, I became more intrigued with the character of Dr. Torres, played by the late LVN star Mario Montenegro. Dr. Torres is a physical and moral wreck who committed an unspeakable crime. Mario was the first LVN star I worked with as a director, and at the start of principal photography, his presence on my set made me nervous. He was my favourite LVN actor because of the costume movies he made, including Prinsipe Teñoso (Gregorio Fernandez, 1954), one of my favourite films as a young boy.”