Director: Marc Singer

Summary: A documentary which takes a look at a group of homeless people living in a train tunnel beneath Manhattan.

DARK DAYS, a groundbreaking documentary from British director Marc Singer, shows a way of life that is unimaginable to most people. The film, which features a moving soundtrack from DJ Shadow, focuses on a group of homeless people that live deep underground in an abandoned New York City railroad tunnel. During the daytime they scavenge for food on the streets of New York. At night, they retreat to the tunnel where they have built homes out of scrap metal, plastic, and plywood. The residents have electricity, furniture, and working kitchens, not to mention community, comradery, and the support of each other. Some of them have lived in the tunnel for 25 years.
Shot in vivid black and white, capturing both the grit (chicken wire, concrete walls, ramshackle shelters) and the honesty (the residents have hit rock bottom and admit it) of the tunnel, Singer's film consists of candid conversations with tunnel dwellers, who are intelligent, funny, optimistic, and above all, human. One man confesses that he once had a wife and a child, and that he lost both to his drug addiction (crack cocaine), while one teenage boy living in the tunnel explains that he was abused by his family in Florida and simply ran away, finding life in the tunnel more redeeming. In the film's emotional, understated conclusion, Singer, who actually resided in the tunnel while making DARK DAYS, turns to New York City's Coalition for the Homeless for help.

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For two years Marc Singer lived with the people who make their home in the tunnels beneath Penn Station in New York, creating Dark Days, an unflinching portrait of a part of society that is literally and figuratively beneath our notice. "You'd be surprised what the human mind and body can adjust to," says Tito, one of the tunnel dwellers. Along with his neighbours he is homeless, but the tunnels offer them a degree of safety that doesn't exist on the streets above. In this strange place they manage to achieve a remarkable degree of domesticity, building shelters, keeping pets and cooking meals. Singer has an eye for telling images, such as Dee dragging a sofa along the train tracks like Sisyphus rolling his stone in Hell. With its grainy black-and-white photography and haunting soundtrack, this is a surprisingly beautiful film, but it is never sentimental, nor does it try to impose false nobility on its subjects. Dark Daysshows a world that we never knew existed, and in this simplicity lies its power. --Simon Leake

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	The Making Of Dark Days A 45 Minute Documentary, Interviews With Director Marc Singer DJ Shadow And Ben Freedman, Commentary By Marc Singer, Never Before Seen Footage 15 Additional Scenes With Notes By Marc Singer, The History Of The New York City Subways T
Year:	2000
Release Date:	January 21, 2002
Runtime:	84 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	O P T D 008
Keywords:	Days, Dark, Off, General, Wide, Screen, Documentaries, Schedule, Biographies
Genre:	Documentaries & Biographies