Henry Rollins: Uncut from South Africa

I have been traveling to Africa with fair frequency for ten years now. No matter what part of the continent I have visited, I always come away with a mixture of feelings from great amazement to great sorrow. During the time of apartheid, Nelson Mandela's incarceration, the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings, I tried to learn what I could to get my head around what had been happening there. I was raised in a racist atmosphere and like many, have not only a low tolerance for it but a curiosity as to what causes it and why it just can't stop dead in its tracks and vanish.

As well, my travels in Africa opened my eyes to a kind of poverty I had never seen before which overwhelmed me. What I saw made me think differently about food, water, life, existence, America, pretty much everything. IFC gave me a budget which allowed me to go to South Africa with a camera crew and ask some questions to people there. As with the other times I have been to Africa, the experience was eye opening and much more than I am able to describe. Hopefully you will be able to check out the footage we shot and see the people we encountered. They are some of the most courageous, resilient and inspiring people I have ever met. There is no place I have ever been that makes me feel so connected, for better or for worse, to the human experience than Africa and this trip was perhaps the most poignant of them all.