Dark Days | Marc Singer | It takes hard work and ingenuity fo live in a subway tunnel

Dark Days | Marc Singer | An Incredible Black & White Sundance Award Winner

DVDs:

Dark Days

	Dark Days Marc Singer Palm Pictures / Umvd, 2001 average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It takes hard work and ingenuity fo live in a subway tunnel

This documentary won three separate awards in the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. I can well understand why. At that time there was a whole colony of homeless people who lived underground in the subway tunnels in New York City. It was dark and damp and full of rats, but yet they preferred it to a homeless shelter. There, they erected their personal shacks and struggled for survival, venturing out to forage in garbage cans for food as well as for stuff to sell. British Producer Marc Singer was so fascinated by these people that he ventured into these tunnels and spent two years getting to know them. Eventually he wound up living with them and made this film, using the homeless people themselves as crew.

The film is unique in that it shows these homeless people as human beings and the viewer gets to know them as individuals. Yes, many of them have drug problems, but they still have lives, hopes and dreams, a tough will to survive and often a sense of humor. They manage to cook meals on makeshift stoves and there is a feeling of camaraderie among them. We also see their ingenuity with the very little they have. And realize that their days are full of hard work just to survive. The conditions they live in are absolutely squalid. But this is their home.

During the course of the film, Amtrak decided to rid the tunnels of the people and homeless advocates negotiated for them to be placed in real housing. By the end of the film we see them in real apartments. There is an upbeat quality to this ending of the film.

However, the DVD is much more than the actual film. There's a 40-minute interview with the filmmaker, Marc Singer, which is equally as fascinating as the film. I hadn't realized that he was a non-professional person who had never made a film before. He spent all his money on a camera and had to learn how to load the film. He became obsessed with making the film, and became homeless himself after starting to edit the more than 50 hours of film he had shot. There were many delays and setbacks but eventually the film was made and received many accolades.

On the DVD we also get to find out what happened to the many individual homeless people who we got to know through the film. A few had died but most of them had moved on and were leading more productive lives. It felt good to know this and to realize that Marc Jacobs had really done a tremendous good deed by merely making this film. I applaud him in every way. And I also applaud the film. Highly recommended. Especially on DVD with the added features.

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An Incredible Black & White Sundance Award Winner

Imagine for a moment that you're a regular bloke and you want to do something to help the New York City homeless. You've got very little money, no resources, but a big heart. What could you possibly do to make a dent in their population?

If you're Marc Singer, the man behind this Sundance Award winning documentary, you found a way to do quite a lot.

For a person who'd never touched a movie camera before starting in on this "project", one can see why this film impacts its viewers on multiple levels. Shot in grainy black-and-white 16mm film, this documentary gives us a startlingly real-life look at several homeless people living in self-built shanties in the Amtrak tunnels under the city. No light makes it down there, except whenever a train skirts by or via the makeshift lighting this weird community has produced by tapping into Amtrak's electrical system.

Marc Singer delves into this society. And I mean he DELVES. Mr. Singer gave up living on the surface and slunk into this netherworld for two years in order to shoot his film. And who did he use as grips, sound assistants, and lighting experts? The homeless themselves.

More interesting than the film itself is how it got made. After watching the documentary, I went ahead and looked over the special features on the DVD and found a "Making Of" track which focused on Mr. Singer and how he accomplished his film making. This showed the incredible lack of understanding of anything related to filming and those who helped him out, both in teaching him and by giving him financial help so that the documentary made it out to the public. We also get to see the amazing multiple awards that the documentary won at Sundance; an incredible set of scenes that contrasts starkly with what Mr. Singer had gone through in order to make this film a reality.

Never giving up on his newfound tunnel companions, never letting financial devastation overtake him, never giving up creative control, all added to the success of the film and my enjoyment of all aspects of it. Bravo, Mr. Singer.

(You might be asking what happens to the tunnel-bound homeless. It's a perfect ending to the film, so you'll have to watch it. I ain't giving it away!)

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More than a documentary. This movie rocks!

Marc Singer has guts to crawl down a hole into abandonned subway tunnels in Manhattan and attempt to film the homeless in the dark. It is unbelievable what goes on in our own country in this day and age.

At first glance the characters are a little shady (especially Dee when she's smokin' crack like there's no tomorrow!) ...but by the end of the movie you totally love the characters. All of the homeless people have a story behind them - death of a loved one, abuse, etc. If you lost everything, who's to say you wouldn't end up in a tunnel somewhere homeless. I was amazed at how extensive their squats were. Shacks with electricity, TV's, makeshift toilets. It's hilarious to see how some things they do are completely acceptable and others they do are horrific.(In the special features, Ralph admits his cousin skinned and ate a fat cat once to survive.) The soundtrack enhances the experience as well.

All of the characters are memorable. The best part is seeing all of them move into real apartments and get jobs, etc. It is incredible to see the difference that one person can make. According to the movie, at least eight have gotten off the streets directly because of the filming of the movie. Marc Singer is an inspiration. This movie will definitely affect you one way or another.

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Gorgeous

I've always loved documentaries - I feel this movie is essential to anyone else who does. It's beautiful and sad and amazing all at once. I rented it on a whim one night because I thought it sounded interesting. Although I was expecting a more sociological look at the plight of the homeless, I cannot fault this movie for being what it is, because I was really awestruck by it.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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