The new Iraq war documentary Severe Clear features footage shot by a Marine who lived it, putting the viewer into the chaos like never before. Interview by Jordan Reed When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, First Lieutenant Mike Scotti and the rest of the 1st Battalion,...
by Elias Andrinopoulos “Severe Clear”, the uncompromsing new documentary film from Sirk Producions, had it’s inception in 2004 when a young Marine, newly returned from combat, walked into NYU’s Tisch School of Film one fateful day. Heavy with a bag of DV tapes under...
By Kenji Fujishima A small, independently-financed film exists that captures, with utmost realism and gritty immediacy, the experience of being an American soldier in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. No, it’s not Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” which took home an...
By MARK WALKER Despite serving in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, former Camp Pendleton Marine Mike Scotti says the defining moment in his military career happened two years later in Iraq when he encountered a field full of corpses. “I became a veteran at the moment...
By Sarah Phelan Salem Film Fest was the last stop in the film festival circuit for “Severe Clear,” a documentary that chronicles 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom through the eyes of a Marine, before its official theatrical release in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and...
Right before U.S. Marine First Lt. Mike Scotti left for Iraq in March 2003 as part of the first wave of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he bought a video camera. “I bought it right before I left San Diego,” says Scotti, a Colts Neck resident. “I think it was a Canon. I told...