Marc Singer’s DARK DAYS looks at people living in underground tunnels below Penn Station
DARK DAYS (Marc Singer, 2000)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Monday, March 21, $10, 7:00
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.darkdays.com
The award-winning documentary Dark Days takes a frightening look at a community of homeless men and women — many of them former or current crack users — who live in the Amtrak tunnels beneath Penn Station. They sleep in tents, cardboard shacks, and small plywood shanties, some of which have been painted and decorated. As the belowground residents shave, cook, play with their pets, and take showers under leaking pipes, trains speed by, and rats scavenge through the countless mounds of garbage. At times some of the men venture aboveground (“up top”) to go through trash cans, mostly looking for recyclable bottles and junk items they can resell. First-time filmmaker Marc Singer became a part of this colony for two years (he initially went down to help the people, not to film them), getting the residents to open up and tell their fascinating stories, which turn out to be filled with a surprising zest for living. In fact, all of the underground shooting was completed with the help of the subjects themselves acting as the crew when they were not on camera. DJ Shadow composed the haunting music for this strangely enriching look at a mysterious, truly terrifying part of New York City. Dark Days kicks off the True Crime New York series at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem on March 21 and will be introduced by former mayor David Dinkins; the special event, curated by Sylvia Savadjian, will be followed by a discussion with Singer and Mary Brosnahan, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless. The series continues March 22, 24, and 26 with Alex Gibney’s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer and March 23, 25, and 27 with Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning Inside Job. There will be postscreening Q&As on March 24 with Gibney and March 25 with activist Carl Dix, with more to be announced.