Massimo Riva and his friend Guy Borlée sat at a café table outside the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna sipping wine and dreaming of ways to share their experiences with Riva's friends and family back home in Providence.

"I wanted to bring this back to my students at Brown," says Riva, who is a professor of Italian studies at the university. "Brown has been bringing students to Bologna for the past 30 years, to the Il Cinema Ritrovato at the Cineteca of Bologna. I thought it would be great to bring a little bit of that flavor back with me."