NOISE - Film #1 in director Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film cycle.

Thursday January 29, 2026 | 6:30 - 8:30pm

at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

Tickets: $10 GA / $6 TLM members | Register via Humanitix

$50 / $35 (TLM members) full series tickets available at this link.

Ben Malafide (Robert Viharo), arrives in San Francisco by ferryboat after 20 years in Federal Prison. He finds a world run by misdirection, euphemism, equivocation, downright lies and which avoids direct answers to any given question. Street raw meets digital glitz and Ben is transported...then thwarted.

9 interconnected feature films, spun from the world of the Tenderloin and featuring TL denizens inhabiting their characters and improvising the scripts, are framed by the poetic vision and prolific practice of iconoclast director Rob Nilsson. His ambitious 9 @ Night cycle achieves an deep exploration of the human condition and stands as a rich chronicle of the Tenderloin–the physical place, its people, their existential struggles, sorrows and joys.

Independently produced, the series is an epic feat of cinema in terms of both craft & concept. 9 @ Night is the fruit of Nilsson’s nearly 2-decade collaboration with the Tenderloin yGroup, an acting workshop embedded in the neighborhood and operating with Nilsson’s creative method of “Direct Action,” which he describes as “a cinema of the moment which lives off the land to discover the relationship between what we think we want and what is actually there.” The films and the process that created them (as well as their life after completion) are a tremendous synthesis of art-making, community, and the culture of the Tenderloin both real and imagined.

The Tenderloin Museum is proud to present the 9 @ Night series in its entirety, screened salon-style with Nilsson (and guests) in-person, offering a rare opportunity to see the complete film cycle in “the land” where it was forged. For lovers of San Francisco on-screen, gritty filmic realism, character driven dramas, consider 9 @ Night an essential opus in the canon of Tenderloin-alia! 

NOISE is the first film in the 9 @ Night cycle. While completists will be rewarded with narrative and visual resonance across the films, each movie can be enjoyed independently. Read more about the series here, and visit RobNilssonArtForms.com to explore the filmmakers full oeuvre.

About NOISE / 9 @ Night:

• Winner: San Francisco Film Critic's Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and innovation in the cinema, 2008.

• World Premiere: Virginia Film Festival, 2002.

“If pressed, many cinephiles would admit a magnetic attraction to truly magnum opuses: whether crafted by Tarr, Rohmer, Rivette or Syberberg, the mere existence of such titanic features or multi-film cycles suggests an important artistic event. There’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of discovering a huge project that in cinematic terms reaches for the extra-wide narrative/cinematic embrace of THE BROTHER’S KARAMAZOV, Proust, even INFINITE JEST. But does anyone work with that kind of scope in contemporary American cinema? Meet Rob Nilsson, who with very little self-promotional zeal has spend the last dozen- plus years creating a fascinating collection of exquisitely shot digital features under the umbrella of 9 @ Night… a sprawling black and white tapestry of separate but overlapping feature narratives that encompass a broad character scroll of homeless, hustling and bourgeois types in San Francisco and environs.” – Dennis Harvey, Film Comment, Sept./Oct. Issue, 2008

• The first film in Nilsson's 9@Night Film Series: 9 feature films sharing characters and circumstance with dialogue improvised by the Players, received the San Francisco Film Critic's Circle Marlon Riggs Award for courage and innovation in the cinema, 2008.

• Praise from Ray Carney and the Academy Foundation:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/9-night-the-films-of-rob-nilsson-2/

• The World Premiere marathon screening of all the 9 @ Night Films took place at the Harvard Film Archive in 2007.

"The most aesthetically striking title among veteran American indie filmmaker Rob Nilsson's gritty vid-drama "9 at Night" series to date, "Noise" is an arresting mix of improv-based, streetwise storytelling and elaborate digital-graphic packaging." - Dennis Harvey, Variety, Oct 21, 2002

Directed by:

• Rob Nilsson

Story:

• Rob Nilsson

Improvised by the Cast:

• Robert Viharo – Ben Malafide

• Paige Olson – Angel

• Edwin Johnson – Johnny

• Bill Ackridge – Speed

• Dolores Aguilar – Hotel Clerk

• Corey Allen – Ulf’s Father

• Steve Burns – House Owner

• Jim Carpenter – Lover

• Domenique Lozano – Lover

• Don De Fina – Sets

• Kindra Martin – Woman to Vallejo

• Brette McCabe – Harbinger

• Rob Nilsson – Pool Player

• Phil Palmer – Liquor Store Clerk

• Josh Peterson – Ulf

• Johnnie Reese – Johnson’s Associate

• Madelon van der Tuin – Woman in Room

• Teddy Weiler – Harbinger

Cinematographers:

• Billy Corona

• Ethan Sing

• Mickey Freeman

Sound:

• Rand Crook

• T.J. Walkup

Production Manager:

• Mira Larkin

Music by:

• Daniel Feinsmith

Editor:

• Josh Williams

Producers:

• Chikara Motomura

• Rob Nilsson

• Kevin Michael Winterfield

Executive Producers:

• Carol Richards

• David Richards

Dedicated To: Bill Ackridge

Okunrin Meta - David Schickele