Marc Singer's underground documentary, Dark Days

Marc Singer's film, Dark Days, which will be screened at the Barbican, London, on 31 January, documents the self-sufficient homeless community living beneath an Amtrak tunnel in Midtown, New York. 

'What I saw were people who weren't feeling sorry for themselves,' says Singer, who borrowed cameras and sold his bed to pay for the film. 'They had made the best out of a very bad situation. So I had a lot of respect for everybody and didn't want to see them living in the tunnel - they deserved better.'

Cooking, washing, shaving and getting dressed, these daily tasks - as well as the filming of Dark Days - were done in almost darkness and soon the homeless people Singer was documenting became the crew: 'People were fantastic at tapping into electricity. We'd be in a place with no electricity and they would make electricity happen.'