'God's Work': voices from the streets of Durban

“WHEN you're on the streets, people look through you. I’m tired of being invisible.”

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The words above are from a homeless character in God’s Work — the homegrown Durban film that opened this week at the Durban International Film Festival. But though they were spoken by an actor, Mbulelo Radebe, they could easily have been the actual words of one of the 6 000 or so homeless men and women in Durban.

If the size of that number shocks you, it is because the quotation is very true: homeless people in our city are invisible.

God’s Work was written and directed by DHS-alumnus Michael James in his first full-length feature film.

James was inspired to make it, while volunteering at the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC) during lockdown. It was a time when the DHC was working with the municipality and other NGOs to organise emergency shelters for 1 500 people across Durban, as well as hosting 100 sick and disabled homeless men in our own building.

James spent time getting to know the homeless men in residence. A few of them started telling him about an idea they had for a story, and, to their delight, he worked with them to make a 20-minute video which they conceived and wrote, called No Kings on the Streets, which can be viewed on the DHC YouTube channel.

The more James chatted with them, the more moved he was by their own stories and their feeling that no one was interested in hearing their voices.

From this original interaction, God’s Work was inspired. Five years later, it has received the red-carpet treatment at its world premiere at the CineCentre at SunCoast.

Present were not only the filmmakers and actors (many of them graduates of DUT’s drama programme), but also homeless men who acted as paid consultants during the filming process to advise James on how to present the story in an authentic way.