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Rocked: Sum 41 in Congo, the documentary of the Toronto band's May 2004 trip -- including the band's evacuation from the town of Bukavu amid gunshot and mortar fire -- will air August 8th on Canada's MuchMusic and then later this summer on MTV. A DVD will be released shortly thereafter.
The film documents the evacuation of the Orchid Hotel step by step. When shots ring out, drummer Steve Jocz, a master of understatement, announces, "I'm in some kind of pickle here." The band, who was in Bukavu with humanitarian organization War Child, is informed that a shootout is taking place between Congolese and Rwandan soldiers, and they and the other civilians are led to safety by U.N. peacekeepers -- including Charles Pelletier, after whom Sum 41 would name their latest album, Chuck.
During the evacuation, all were instructed to leave their belongings behind, with the exception of passports and wallets. That included the documentary crew's video footage. The very next day, however, Pelletier and War Child Canada president Eric Hoskins went back to retrieve it, "even though there was no intelligence at all on what was happening at the hotel," says Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh.
Directors George Vale and Adrian Calender managed to distill that footage of the ten-day visit down to fifty-two minutes. While members of Sum 41 -- Jocz, Baksh, frontman Deryck Whibley and bassist Jason "Cone" McCaslin -- narrate the experience, key statistics and information about the war-ravaged region flash on the screen. The civil and regional war has claimed 3.5 million lives since it began in 1996: more than any other war since World War II. Much of the conflict is over the control of coltan, a mineral commonly used in cell phones and video games and very valuable to the Western world.
"I'm dangerous, so I'm not afraid to go," we see Baksh joke at the outset of the trip. He now admits, "I was even scared when I was saying that. And I remember, while all of the [gunfire] was going on, Adrian looking at me and going, 'You're dangerous, eh?' I had no answer [laughs]."
In a lighter moment, Rocked shows the band getting up-close-and-personal with 500-pound gorillas in the jungle. "It was a long hike to get there, and it really hurt," says Baksh. "But I was super excited. The gorillas' eyes were just so human."
The film also documents Sum 41 visiting Eckabana House, an orphanage for girls banished from their homes for allegedly being witches, and a trip to the music therapy camp Solidarity Action for Children in Distress. "The leader of the camp said it would be fun if we could do an exchange of music, so we exchanged one of the most popular hits of our time," explains Baksh of the band's impromptu rendition of the Beatles "Hey Jude." "Their music was better [laughs]."
Sum 41 are continuing their relationship with War Child and the Democratic Republic of Congo by helping to rebuild a school outside Bukavu.