Coming Soon
DARK DAYS
2000
Director
Marc Singer
Starring
Greg
Julio
Lee
Tommy
Ralph
Dee
Henry
Runtime
82 minutes
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"You'd be surprised what the human mind and the human body can adjust to."
The existence of people living in the tunnels underneath New York City was once considered an urban legend, but DARK DAYS, filmed over two-and-a-half years in the mid-'90s, proved definitively that not only did these people exist, but that they had managed to create lives out what the rest of the city left behind.
In the Amtrak tunnels underneath New York's Penn Station, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night, a community takes root. Exploring this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, DARK DAYS unearths a way of life unimaginable to those above. Under the initiative of director Marc Singer – who had never previously even held a camera – the film becomes a collaborative endeavor. The tunnel-dwellers assemble into a crew. Some hold lights and microphones, others draw on their professional pasts to tap electricity and construct fresh tracks for dolly shots. The financial dividends of the film are going to be used toward finding permanent housing. Much of the film's power comes from being shot in black & white, its chiaroscuric beauty making it the proletarian antithesis of MANHATTAN. Undergirding this extraordinarily honest look at the challenges and camaraderie of trying to live without a permanent home, a superb original score by DJ Shadow lends the proceedings an air of steely majesty.
Through stories simultaneously heartbreaking, hilarious, intimate, and off the cuff, these stygian settlers reveal their reasons for taking refuge and their struggle to survive underground on their own terms. DARK DAYS a creative collaboration that remains a soulful and enduring document of life on the fringe.
"Even if it proves to be the only film Marc Singer ever makes, it's still an astonishing achievement, a triumph of doggedness, solidarity and artistic vision. While it has never lost its power to move and astound, it feels ever more pertinent each passing year. The darkness encroaches." - Sukhdev Sandhu
The existence of people living in the tunnels underneath New York City was once considered an urban legend, but DARK DAYS, filmed over two-and-a-half years in the mid-'90s, proved definitively that not only did these people exist, but that they had managed to create lives out what the rest of the city left behind.
In the Amtrak tunnels underneath New York's Penn Station, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night, a community takes root. Exploring this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, DARK DAYS unearths a way of life unimaginable to those above. Under the initiative of director Marc Singer – who had never previously even held a camera – the film becomes a collaborative endeavor. The tunnel-dwellers assemble into a crew. Some hold lights and microphones, others draw on their professional pasts to tap electricity and construct fresh tracks for dolly shots. The financial dividends of the film are going to be used toward finding permanent housing. Much of the film's power comes from being shot in black & white, its chiaroscuric beauty making it the proletarian antithesis of MANHATTAN. Undergirding this extraordinarily honest look at the challenges and camaraderie of trying to live without a permanent home, a superb original score by DJ Shadow lends the proceedings an air of steely majesty.
Through stories simultaneously heartbreaking, hilarious, intimate, and off the cuff, these stygian settlers reveal their reasons for taking refuge and their struggle to survive underground on their own terms. DARK DAYS a creative collaboration that remains a soulful and enduring document of life on the fringe.
"Even if it proves to be the only film Marc Singer ever makes, it's still an astonishing achievement, a triumph of doggedness, solidarity and artistic vision. While it has never lost its power to move and astound, it feels ever more pertinent each passing year. The darkness encroaches." - Sukhdev Sandhu