Dark Days
October 25, 2008 02:05 AM Filed in: Movies
Janice and I just watched an amazing movie called Dark Days. Made and filmed by Marc Singer, the movie won three Sundance Film Festival awards in 2000. It is a documentary about homeless people living in abandoned Amtrak subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. What makes this documentary so great is that it makes you connect at a very personal level with individuals in a community with whom we would otherwise never connect. It is not sentimental and yet it leaves your jaw on the floor with a wow!
When Singer came to New York from the UK, he was fascinated by the idea of people living in tunnels. He spent almost a year in the dark tunnels with the homeless to get to know them. Then it occurred to him to make a movie so he spent another year in the tunnels filming. Singer had never made a movie before, never used a movie film camera, and did not have the budget to make a movie and yet he pulls off this stunning documentary shot on 16 mm grainy black and white film. He used borrowed and rented cameras, lighting and other equipment. Some of the homeless were his filming crew!
A "must see" - highly recommended.