Hacker Cinema
Dark Days
2000 · Film · documentary · 82 min
Directed by Marc Singer
A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.
6 positive2 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
if ya love learning about secret spaces, there is documentary named Dark Days about the hundreds of people who lived in the Freedom Tunnels beneath Manhattan in the 90s. incredible incredible movie.
the Freedom Tunnels where the crew did their filming are miles and miles of unused tunnels under Manhattan, formerly used for trains. once the trains stopped using them people built entire shanty towns, the director of Dark Days got thousands of hours of footage of the people inside one of these shanty towns. it’s amazing what the crew got footage of. people building entire little shanty houses and little villages. wild stuff.
i mean, i wouldn’t have lived there, but id be lying if i didnt admit a part of me finds it amazing what they threw together. for years, entire secret shanty villages right under the city with small village sized populations.
If you can get your hands on it and haven't seen it, watch the documentary Dark Days about people living in railway tunnels below NYC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_(film)
> disappeared into sewers under the city
This might interest you: I watched the quite disturbing documentary "Dark Days" a few years ago about homeless people living in subway and sewage tunnels under New York. They had built small apartments down there and even had electricity.
Here are the first 10 minutes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4s78Db5OQ
A few people used to live in the Amtrak tunnels on the Hudson River side of Manhattan. There was a documentary made about them [0]. They were evicted, and the tunnels fenced off, in the late 1990s.
I would be quite surprised if anyone was living in the subway tunnels. Compared to the Amtrak tunnels, they are much narrower. Additionally, people were living in the Amtrak tunnels during a time when the tunnels were unused or seldom used by train traffic. In contrast, subway tunnels see lots of traffic 24 hours a day.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_(film)
Great question!
Patricio Guzman: La batalla de chile, Nostalgia de la luz, El boton de nacar (i.e. everything I've seen so far)
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson - First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbours, Black Harvest (Trilogy about a half-white, half-native New Guinean farmer)
Werner Herzog - (apart from those already mentioned) Lessons of Darkness, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams
Everything by Scott Noble - watch on metanoia-films.org/
Bus 174, Harlan Country USA, How To Start A Revolution, Silenced (2014), War on Whistleblowers, The Century of the Self
Man with a Movie Camera, Man on Wire, Dark Days, Kumaré, Dear Zachary, Children Full of Life (2003)
Wow. I bought the book on the used market after reading about it -- I think here on HN, in fact. Probably the most expensive book I've bought so far!
They're selling prints on their website, and I'd love to get one, but they're charging 200 (two oh oh) GBP for a medium sized print which is preposterous, or in any event way out of my comfort zone. Too bad.
PS: If you enjoy City of Darkness, you may enjoy the film Dark Days (different subject, similar theme). Much like Kowloon Walled City, I've never seen anything else quite like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_%28film%29
I assume you've seen Dark Days?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Days_(film)
Dark Days is great. It's about people living in a train tunnel in NYC: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235327/
Errol Morris' movies are all good. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is pretty widely known. But also check out The Thin Blue Line, which is built around multiple reconstructions of a crime scene and got a death penalty sentence reversed: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096257/
Some Bladerunner DVD collections have the 3:53 hour long documentary "Dark Days", which is excellent and goes into Trumbull's work in great detail.