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Dark
Days
Cinema
21
616
NW 21st Ave., 223-4515
7 and
8:40 pm Friday-Wednesday, 9 pm Thursday, Dec. 15-21. Additional
shows Saturday and Sunday 1:30, 3:15 and 5 pm.
Filmmaker
Marc Singer, a former model, spent time living in the tunnels
under New York's Penn Station.
The
Dark Days crew was made up of the homeless people
Singer filmed, some of whom are partial owners of
the film.
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If you spend enough time in New York City, you will eventually
see it all. By "all," I mean the human experience in all of
its God-must-have-planned-it-this-way beauty and ugliness.
The cramped room that I called home was located in a building
at West 34th Street and 9th Avenue. Two blocks away was Penn
Station, the place where all of Amtrak's trains rolled in
and out of the city--and ground zero for all the sick, maggot-gagging
depravity this world has to offer.
Frequently I stood at the 34th Street subway stop at Penn
Station, waiting for the A train to take me either downtown
or up to Harlem. On that platform, I saw it all. Crack deals
and sex sales. Muggings. Knifings. Rats the size of dogs.
Human beings squatting on the platform taking a shit while
people standing around pretended not to notice.
And then there were the
mole people.
That's what my friend Carlo called the homeless people
who lived in the tunnels under Penn Station--mole people.
"Don't let those freaks catch you on the platform alone
after dark," he warned me. "Them mole people will drag you
into the tunnels and eat your ass just like those zombies
in C.H.U.D." Of course I believed him. After all,
Carlo was from New Jersey and knew these sorts of things.
As it turns out, Carlo was slightly misinformed about the
mole people. Dark Days, a new documentary by first-time
filmmaker Marc Singer, offers a bold and insightful look
into the world of the homeless people who live underground.
They are not the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers
of C.H.U.D. or the Crazies that devoured Season Hubley
in Escape from New York. Yes, many are crack addicts,
some are hustlers, and all are wrestling with the demons
that led them underground. But most important, they are
all human beings.
"You'd be surprised what the human body and the human mind
can adjust to," says Greg, one of the tunnel residents profiled
in Dark Days. With no previous film experience, Singer
set out to tell the stories of the people who live in the
tunnels under New York. Why? Because he was one of them.
What started out as curiosity became obsession for Singer
after he first ventured into the tunnels to learn more about
the people who lived there. As time passed, he became friends
with many of the mole people. Singer was inspired to make
his film by Ralph, one of the tunnel dwellers, who once
remarked offhand that their stories would make a good movie.
What followed was a six-year filmmaking experience that
found Singer selling all his worldly possessions and eventually
moving into the tunnels. His close relationship with the
people who became his subjects gave Singer an access few
filmmakers could ever hope for. The result is a collection
of frank and sometimes sad tales of people who live in a
world that seems subhuman. Under Singer's watchful eye,
though, their humanity is ever-present.
Dark Days introduces the audience to a handful of
the underground residents, who live in makeshift homes that
have enough electricity--stolen from the city--to power
refrigerators and televisions. There's Ralph, a recovering
crack addict who prides himself on the house he has built--a
house where no crack smoking is allowed. Dee, Ralph's friend,
is an unrepentant crack smoker who laments the loss of her
children, killed in a fire while she was in jail. And then
there's Henry, who's lived in the tunnels for the better
part of three decades.
What's most remarkable about Dark Days is not the
frankness or candor the subject matter is dealt with, but
the surprising optimism that manages to shine through. The
film is not a pity party for people who are less fortunate.
It is a film about people who have learned to adapt and
survive despite the obstacles they may face. Henry sums
up the conditions he and his neighbors live under--and rise
above--when he tells a fellow mole person that he may be
homeless,
but he isn't helpless.
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