Hi, everyone. So here I am after more than a year, I have finally sat down to restart my podcast On Verite, which I launched a couple of years ago. I’ve been working on an e-commerce site that I invite you to check out ShopLOHASWorld.com, dedicated to clean natural and organic products. Our first line is Enjoy and Live, made in Ecuador with cold-pressed cacay oil and other high-quality ingredients from the Amazon rainforest. The one thing positive thing about COVID is that it inspired many us to pursue things that we are passionate about as a business related to well-being. And since I was born in Ecuador and still have family there, I’ve been hoping to share these kinds of products with people here in the States. I’d love to hear from you if you started a business too. And, of course, I’ve been working on a couple of film related projects that I hope to share in the near future.

Let me start with a question: Did you know that the movie industry began along the New Jersey side of the Hudson River in the early 1900s? This town is where The Exile, the first all-Black cast “talkie”, by Pioneer African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux at Metropolitan Studios was shot, where Humor Risk, the first film the Marx Brothers was shot. And where the “mother of cinema the first female film director and movie executive Alice Guy-Blaché had opened her studio?

Well, these questions bring me to my interview with Nelson Page, President of the Barrymore Film Center, opening in Fort Lee, NJ, October this year.

I recorded this interview at the Barrymore, which was designed by renowned theater architect, the late Hugh Hardy, whose work includes the renovations of Radio City Musical Hall’s and Rainbow Room in Manhattan and so many other theaters. The Barrymore greets you with a stunning white interior and red carpet stair entrance as soon as you walk in; it boasts a 270+seat theater that accommodates a live orchestra. It takes you in with its designed with a mission to create magical film experiences that are dedicated to supporting the voices of independent cinema.