NEED - Film #7 in director Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film cycle.

Thursday February 19 , 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.

Petite robs johns in order to support Tyrone, a failing pool hustler. Jane works as a stripper in a Tenderloin club. Lou, Jane's mother and a heroin addict, is a renegade aging prostitute who works the streets in defiance of the pimps. Francesca manages an escort service and does phone sex. In a profession which thrives on fantasy and martyrdom these women struggle to hold onto their reasons for caring for each other.

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! 

NEED is the seventh 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 NEED / 9 @ Night:

• 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, 2005.

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

"Need depicts the fragile friendships, the familial struggles, the competition as well as the solidarity between four women who work in the sex business in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. It is also a personal look at four distinct people and the people they love, deceive, endure and seek to know" - Nilsson, IMDB, 2005

Director:

• Rob Nilsson

Story:

• Rob Nilsson

Improvised by the Cast:

• Diane Gaidry – Petite

• Marianne Heath – Jane

• Brette McCabe – Lou

• Mira Larkin – Francesca

• Cory DuVal – Bid

• Bruce Marovich – Qually

• David Fine – Salowitz

• Anya Luchitskaia – Masha

• Richard Ira ‘Chaka’ Jones – Chaka

• Terry Forgette – Jason

• Burns Ellison – Burns

• Marion Christian – Big E

• Vernon Madeiros – Blackie

• Johnny Holiday – Homeless Man

• Irit Levi – Homeless Woman

• Dean Adams – Henry

• Maria Mastroyannis – Maple

• Teddy Weiler – Phil Berkowitz

• Armand Blasi – Thomas Ethan Lovell

• Jerome B. Sims – Fireman 1

• Joe Buono – Fireman 2

• Dave Dumanis – Fireman 3

• Sue Rolovich – Cop

• Pat Wallace – Security Guard

• Constance Taylor – Hooker 1

• Jessica Levai – Hooker 2

• Emily Sims – Cindy

• Rob Nilsson – Photographer

• Susan Bremer – Leone

• Crister De Leon – Gang Guy 1

• Juan Sandoval – Gang Guy 2

• Devin Qualls – Gang Guy 3

• Chris MacDonald – Walt

• Myron ‘Peachy’ Bennett – Peachy

• Brian Danker – Bridge Guard

• Billy Aguero – Golfer

• Mason Waqar – Mason

• Liz Harris – Candy

• John Hunsaker – Chuckles

• Chris Kaikinger – Junkie 1

• Kevin Woodruff – Little F

• Dennis Somera – Junkie 2

• Adan J. Faudoa – Voice of Gang Guy 2

• Kirsten Long – Exotic Dancer

Cinematography:

• Mickey Freeman

Additional Cinematographers:

• Steve Burns

• Chikara Motomura

Still Photographers:

• Margot Duane

• Trudy Fisher

• Kristy Severance

• Robert Unsworth

Grip:

• Quinn Costello

Gaffer:

• Eric Blum

Sound Recordist:

• Claudia Katayanagi

• Mike McGovern

• Chikara Motomura

Set Decoration:

• Liz Harris

• Aiyana Udesen

Costume Design:

• Megan Earsley

Makeup Artist:

• Kira Lee

Production Manager:

• Mira Larkin

Caterer:

• Bridget Burch

Editor:

• Chikara Motomura

Sound Designer:

• Al Nelson

Producer:

• Beth LaDove

Executive Producer:

• Kevin Michael Winterfield

Thanks:

• Michelle Anton Allen

• Deniz Demirer

• Carol Richards

• David Richards

• Gail Schickele

• Robindra Unsworth

Dedicated to the Memory of Edwin Johnson

Okunrin Meta - David Schickele