ABSTRACT
Roy Martin’s use of the storm drains beneath Los Angeles in He Walked by Night highlights how underground space can be both constructed and reconstructed to serve a new purpose. Edet Belzberg’s Oscar-nominated documentary Children Underground (2001) illustrates another use for underground urban spaces—providing a home for displaced children. The opening of Children Underground offers a grim picture of the lives of unwanted children in Romania. A written introduction explains, “In an effort to increase the nation’s work force, former communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu outlawed contraception and abortion. Thousands of unwanted children were placed in state orphanages, where they faced terrible conditions.” After Ceausescu’s fall in December 1989, many children from orphanages and impoverished families “moved onto the streets.” As of 2001, there were 20,000 homeless children living in Bucharest. Because “the resources for sheltering these homeless youths were severely limited,” some of those children moved into the Victorei subway station to escape a savage city and the brutal winters above them.
