About Titlepage
Stories Worth Talking About
Great stories have the ability of bringing a level of excitement and pleasure matched by little else. Who hasn't gotten so engrossed in a book, they couldn't put it down? The thrill of living someone else's life; of embarking on an adventure one will never experience; of discovering ideas or concepts one could never dream up - all those are feelings that transcend cultures and borders.
At Titlepage we feel we don't hear enough from the people who write the greatest stories of our time. So, we've created this virtual soapbox; a 21st century version of the Algonquin Round Table. With your help, we want to give authors the opportunity to tell us more about the stories they've written, how they came to develop them and why.
Join us! The conversation has started.
Bios
Founder and Executive Producer: Odile Isralson
ODILE ISRALSON, has worked as a news producer for the U.S. bureaus of Swiss and German television stations, and was a reporter for the Belgian News Agency and the Canadian Radio Network. As a producer, she covered breaking national and international news stories, from Haiti to Panama, from Somalia to the U.S. Presidential elections.
In 1998, along with Lina Matta, Isralson founded Brown Hats Productions. Their first film was Running for Bogota, an award-winning short about two very different women, both lacking any political experience, who ran for office in Colombia. The film showed on PBS, and at festivals in the U.S. and Europe. She then co-produced their next project, Prison Lullabies, an award-winning feature-length documentary that investigated the fates of four women who gave birth while incarcerated in New York State.
Odile holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston University. Originally from Brussels, Belgium, Odile now lives in New York.
Founder and Executive Producer: Lina Matta
LINA MATTA was born in Lebanon. After graduating from the Lebanese American University, she went on to receive a Master’s in Film Production from Boston University. She spent nearly a decade as a TV Director and Producer in Washington, D.C., developing and distributing news magazine shows and documentaries to the burgeoning pan-Arab TV satellite market.
As a co-founder of Brown Hats Productions, Matta produced/directed two award-winning documentaries Running for Bogota and Prison Lullabies. For six years, she was the programming and production consultant for Dubai Media Incorporated and played a primary role in setting up Dubai One, a 24-hour English-language entertainment satellite channel. She divides her time between New York and Dubai.
Original Music: Loren Toolajian
Born in San Francisco, LOREN TOOLAJIAN sang in the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and studied theory, harmony and piano at the renowned San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He received numerous accolades in the radio industry for his interviews with such artists as Leonard Bernstein, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Bennett. An award-winning composer and musician, Toolajian has composed and produced music for television, radio, film, and the theatre, including for the work of such luminaries as Sam Shepard, Arthur Miller, and Horton Foote. A small sample of his recent TV credits attests to his versatility: the theme music for HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam,” the theme for ESPN’s “Sunday Night Football” teases, and the theme and 40 songs for Sesame Street’s “Beginnings,” a four-DVD set released in April 2006. Currently, he is composing an oratorio, For the Dead and What’s Inside Us. Loren also hosts a weekly classical music show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Toolajian lives in New Jersey with his four greatest loves—Anne, Joshua, Dylan, and Matthew.
Set Designer: E. David Cosier
E. DAVID COSIER has been an active member of the entertainment design community for over twenty-five years. He has designed for theatre, film and television. His work includes the world premieres of plays for Edward Albee, August Wilson, Sam Shepard, John Guare, Horton Foote and Adrienne Kennedy. His work has been seen in New York on Broadway, Off -Broadway and throughout the country. His feature film work includes: Changing Lanes, Unfaithful, Underdog, Hardluck, 21 and Pink Panther Deux. For television he has designed for “Saturday Night Live,” “Sex and The City,” and “The Brotherhood,” among others. He is currently working with Horton Foote on The Trip to Bountiful for the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He is a founding member of Signature Theatre Company in New York and is currently on faculty at RISD and Brandeis University’s graduate design program.
Graphic Designer and Animator: May Ghaibeh
MAY GHAIBEH is a graphic designer based in Beirut, Lebanon. For the past ten years, she has worked in multimedia and web design, and since 2004, she has produced motion graphics for television. Between 1997 and 2003, she taught Advanced Computer Graphics and Digital Media at the Lebanese American University.
Photographer: Peter B. Moore
PETER B. MOORE acquired his first box camera at the age of 10 and experienced his earliest success soon after with a group of 12 photographs of the moon and stars exhibited at the New York Planetarium. After many years spent photographing nature, Moore turned his lens to human subjects, his interest being less on abstraction of form than on human psychology—attitudes, and expression. His latest exhibit, “Catching the Moment,” is a series of color photographs shot in front of the Guggenheim Museum.
Studio:
Titlepage is filmed at Metropolis Studios - metropolis-studios.com
Web designer and developer:
Door3 - door3.com