1st Lt. Mike Scotti, recently returned from Afghanistan, joined the 2003 Iraq invasion force as a gung ho Marine, believing wholeheartedly that he was defending his country, avenging the September 11 attacks, and seeking Saddam Hussein’s confirmed weapons of mass...
All Things Sand By Cynthia Fuchs “If the Republican Guard, supposedly the elite Iraqi force, chooses to stand and meet us,” submits First Lieutenant Mike Scotti, “It could become a shitty mess. I guess that means I’m gonna need a lot of film. That’s about it.” Well,...
Saturday, April 3, 2010 BY GIOVANNA FABIANO STAFF WRITER LEONIA — First Lt. Mike Scotti wanted to give people at home a glimpse into the life of a Marine on the front lines of the Iraq invasion in 2003. So he strapped a hand-held video camera to his fighter helmet and...
By Julia Baird “We don’t have the luxury of choosing our wars. We go where and when our president tells us to—without hesitation. I know it’s hard for some to understand: no matter how much it sucks at times, we love what we f–king do” (Mike Scotti, in the documentary...
The year is 1991 and I’m a high school sophomore who eats, breathes and sleeps cinema. I live in Leonia, New Jersey, a small, sleepy, suburban town 15 miles from midtown Manhattan, and my heroes are George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. Beyond the...
By Michael Slenske In pilotspeak the term “severe clear” describes a rare set of visibility conditions with an almost infinite amount of clarity, typically appearing after stormy weather. As fate would have it, those conditions presented themselves on the morning of...
I recently sat down with producer, and longtime Lower East Side resident, Marc Perez, to talk about his real life war movie, “Severe Clear.” After a successful festival circuit run, the documentary is opening at the Angelika this weekend. It was directed and edited...
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...
