Dark Days
Dir/DP/Prod: Marc Singer; Prod: Ben Freedman; Ed: Melissa Freedman; Music: DJ Shadow.
35mm, 84 min., 1999
Marc Singer never considered himself a documentary filmmaker. In fact, Singer spent months visiting with a small sample of New York’s homeless community before deciding that he should be filming his time with them. A movie, he hoped, might bring attention and support for this group.
Beneath the city’s thundering Amtrak rails, Singer found the makings of an almost mythical Atlantis, a new kind of city living among the darkness, dust, and rats. The tunnels provide a shelter where these citizens in self-exile construct small one-room homes, safe from the threat of police or thieves.
“I don’t consider myself homeless because a homeless man ain’t got no home,” one of the subterranean dwellers explains with an optimism and intelligence that defies everything the movies have shown us about men in his situation. Singer truly bonds with the people on camera (who also served as his impromptu film crew), eventually moving in with them as his funds dwindled.
As a counterpoint to the invasive news-show exposés on homelessness, Dark Days presents an intimate portrait marked by profound humanism. Like Icarus, these are men and women who flew too close to the sun and now find themselves banished to a world without light.
This article appears in March 17 • 2000.