SCHEME C6 - Film #6 in director Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film cycle.

Tuesday February 17 , 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.

A scheme is a dream with street smarts. but doomed to fail. Bid's father is a cop but Bid is an urban outlaw on a motorcycle determined not to need family or society. Yve, his anarchistic girl friend and Grey, his accomplice in stolen auto parts, are part of his scheme to stay one step ahead of the law. Bid invites rebellion but discovers loneliness.

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! 

SCHEME C6 is the sixth 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 SCHEME C6 / 9 @ Night:

"A bracing bull's eye... a tightly wound narrative that's part genre suspense, part bad-boy psychological sketch... results are very much in the tradition that stretches from Godard's "Breathless" through the '99 Aussie hyperventilator "Head On." - Dennis Harvey, Variety, 2001

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

“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

• Praise from Ray Carney and the Academy Foundation:

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

• World Premiere: Mill Valley International Film Festival, 2001.

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

Director:

• Rob Nilsson

Story:

• Rob Nilsson

• Cory DuVal

• MC Mars

Improvised by the Cast:

• Cory DuVal – Bid

• Monica Cortes Viharo – Yve

• David Fine – Salowitz

• MC Mars – Grey

• Ciara Arnette – Reva

• Mira Larkin – Francesca

• Frank Marovich – Ponto

• Mark Douglas – Rico

• Bruce Marovich – Qually

• Eddy Falconer – Joey

• John Hunsaker – Chuckles

• Michael Disend – Spoddy

• Edwin Johnson – Johnny

• Matt Gonzalez – Matty

• Paul Greenberg – Paul

• Teddy Weiler – Phil

Cinematography:

• Steve Burns

Sound:

• Kevin Michael Winterfield

Art Direction:

• Chris Burns

• Jennifer Burns

Set Decoration:

• Adan J. Faudoa

Production Manager:

• Mira Larkin

Assistant Director:

• John Behrens

Editor:

• Chikara Motomura

Music:

• Scott Fraser (as The Bifurcators)

• Philip Perkins (as The Bifurcators)

• Al Nelson

Sound Designer:

• Al Nelson

Stunts:

• Liisa Cohen – Stunt Double

• Cory DuVal – Climbing and Motorcycle Stuntwork / Stunts

• Kevin Larson – Stunts

Producers:

• Rob Nilsson

• Kevin Michael Winterfield

Executive Producers:

• Carol Richards

• David Richards

Thanks:

• Karen McCabe

• Bobby Roth

• Robindra Unsworth

Okunrin Meta - David Schickele