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Doug Blush: Drawn to real life stories

(JP/Jerry Adiguna)It took years of working in show business before celebrated American filmmaker Doug Blush found his calling: documentary film

Andreas D. Arditya (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, October 10, 2014

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Doug Blush:  Drawn to real life stories (JP/Jerry Adiguna) (JP/Jerry Adiguna)

(JP/Jerry Adiguna)

It took years of working in show business before celebrated American filmmaker Doug Blush found his calling: documentary film.

Blush said he had been working on other kinds of movies, including on big Hollywood films such as Titanic and Independence Day, and in numerous other positions like editor, camera operator and still photographer.

'€œI worked on these big feature 1990s movies, which was a lot of fun. But it wasn'€™t until I started making behind-the-scenes documentary movies in some of these projects that I found my favorite spot,'€ Blush told The Jakarta Post.

'€œI realized what I really loved was making documentaries; I never enjoyed working on other projects as much as when I was working on a documentary.

'€œI think I got interested in documentary because I like real stories: stories of people, of real life, of real events and of real history,'€ said the native of Detroit.

Blush was recently in Jakarta as part of the Sundance Institute'€™s Film Forward touring program of Indonesian cities.

Blush'€™s career started in the backyard of his childhood home.

'€œWhen I was a kid, I used to play with my dad'€™s camera. We would go in the backyard to make monster movies, blow up spaceships and things like that,'€ he says.

Even as a child, Blush said that he had known that all he ever wanted to do was make movies.

Blush went to the University of Southern California'€™s School of Cinematic Art, where he met his wife Lisa Klein, who was also born and raised in Detroit.

After finding his true love in filmmaking, Blush decided to move toward documentary around 2000. Together with his wife Blush formed their own company, MadPix Inc. in 2002, which was intended to help the couple create projects together.

Blush then took a wider range of filmmaking jobs: director, producer, cinematographer, writer and sound engineer.

Since deciding to focus on documentaries, he has worked as editor in a wide range of documentaries, including those about the crossword-puzzle culture in World Play (released in 2006), the US national debt crisis in I.O.U.S.A. (2008), the hypocrisy of closeted gay politicians in Outrage (2009), corporate David-and-Goliath battles in Beer Wars (2009) and the adaptation of the popular book Freakonomics (2010).

In 2012, working with director Kirby Dick, he edited and associate produced The Invisible War, which is a documentary about the epidemic of rape among soldiers within the US military.

The documentary received the Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013. The movie has also inspired policy changes and discussion within the US government.

Earlier this year, Blush won the American Cinema Editors'€™ Eddie Award for 20 Feet to Stardom for Best Documentary Editing. The movie, which tells the story of a backup singer who lives in the shadow of some of the world'€™s greatest singers and musicians, also won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards in March.

With his wife, Blush has also directed a number of documentaries. The latest one was Of Two Minds, which explores the extraordinary lives, struggles and successes of people living with bipolar disorder in the US.

'€œIn documentary, sometimes you start with an idea or an intention to make a statement, other times you just want to find out about something and you don'€™t know anything about it. I love the ones where you don'€™t know anything yet. You go out and find out the facts and the truth of what'€™s going on,'€ he said.

Blush said for him making documentaries was about meeting people and learning about their lives, as well as learning about cultures and problems in society.

Juggling so many projects and so many responsibilities simultaneously, Blush said he barely had time for anything else.

'€œWhen you'€™re a filmmaker, it'€™s hard to have any other hobbies. I think one of my favorite hobbies is traveling and meeting people. Travel is a hobby that turns into work; I meet other filmmakers across the world and we can strike connections and plan projects.'€

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