Dark Days (documentary)
| Dark Days | |
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| Directed by | Marc Singer |
| Produced by | Marc Singer |
| Music by | DJ Shadow |
| Cinematography | Marc Singer |
| Edited by | Melissa Neidich |
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Release date
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Running time
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94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Dark Days is a documentary feature made by British filmmaker Marc Singer, shot during the mid-1990s but not completed and released until the year 2000. The film follows a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City underground railway system, more precisely the area of the so-called Freedom Tunnel.
When he relocated from London to Manhattan, Marc Singer was struck by the number of homeless people he had seen throughout the city. Singer had befriended many in New York's homeless community and later, after hearing of people living underground in abandoned tunnel systems, he met and became close to a group of people living in The Freedom Tunnel community stretching north from Penn Station past Harlem.
After living with them for a number of months, he decided to create a documentary in order to help them financially, even though Singer had never been a filmmaker before. He saw the production of Dark Days as a means of gaining better accommodation for the residents of the tunnel.
The film's crew consisted of the subjects themselves, who rigged up makeshift lighting and steadicam dollies, and learned to use a 16mm camera with black-and-white Kodak film. The post-production process took years, as financial difficulties created delays, as did Singer's insistence of creative control to protect the tunnel residents.
During filming, Amtrak announced they would be forcibly evicting the homeless living in the tunnels in order to reroute their trains through the tunnel. This announcement, plus the police presence backing the decision, prompted Singer and photographer Margaret Morton to go to the Coalition for the Homeless for help. Eventually, Singer and Morton managed to secure housing vouchers from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the film's subjects, which enabled them to move out of the tunnels and into their own apartments.
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