A slightly longer version of a note written for the catalogue of London Korean Film Festival 2019.
"There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a pleasant gloom upon it," wrote Charles Dickens of the city of Bologna, "that would leave [a] distinct and separate impression in the mind, among a crowd of cities." Grave and learned? Maybe. Gloom? Never, or shall we say Mr Dickens didn't get there in time for Il Cinema Ritrovato's evening screening in Piazza Maggiore? He would have loved Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados which was seen this year by some 4,000 viewers.