USED - Film #2 in director Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film cycle

Tuesday February 3, 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.

USED follows two pilgrimages to Reno. Malafide and Johnny hop trains to seek inspiration from People T, an ex-con Cherokee healer. But St. Tre takes would-be paramour Kenny by plane to play cards. Out in the Nevada desert one voyage ends in reconciliation... then suicide. The other ends empty-handed back where it started. Everyone has used and been used. A latter day WAITING FOR GODOT. but in constant motion.

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! 

USED is the second 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 USED / 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

• The scope of its ambition, and its commitment to depicting the unglamorous lives of ordinary people, entitles 9 @ Night to be mentioned alongside The Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s brilliantly conceived and executed series loosely inspired by the 10 Commandments...If movies had the power to change our society, the 9 @ Night series would stand as the most important films of the year. - KQED, Michael Fox, Aug 28, 2008

• The second 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/

• World Premiere: Mill Valley International Film Festival, 2007.

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

Directed by:

• Rob Nilsson

Story by:

• Rob Nilsson

• Robert Viharo

Improvised by the Cast:

• Robert Viharo – Malafide

• Paige Olson – St Tre

• Edwin Johnson – Johnnie

• David Hess – Aldo Modisco

• Zak Kilberg – Sherm

• Johnny Tidwell (as John Tidwell) – People T

• John Hunsaker – Chuckles

• Deniz Demirer – Chuck

• Kevin Woodruff – F

• Rob Nilsson – Kenny

• Kieron McCartney – Pan

• Caine De Vore – Aten

• Eleni Ford – Ti

• Larry Lange – Henchman

• Michelle Anton Allen – Michelle

• Steve Tidwell – Steve

• Mantra Plonsey – Baby

• Stephen Pleasant – Rider

• Scott Wannberg – Hobo Poet

• Litta Rascal – Girl Friend

• Jesse Hess – Skin Head #1

• Celik Kayalar – SF Card Player #1

• Jean Shelton – SF Card Player #2

• Ed Ferry – SF Card Player #3

• Dino Loveccio – SF Card Player #4

• Robin Latour – SF Card Player #5

• Marianne Heath – SF Card Player #6

• Brette McCabe – SF Card Player #7

• Sunni McKay – SF Card Player #8

• Michelle Mosley – SF Card Player #9

• Shannan Andra Nilsen – SF Card Player #10

• Cecilia Walken – SF Card Player #11

• Nesser Zhariya – SF Card Player #12

• Steven Borkenhagen – SJ Card Player #1

• Rick Daniels – SF Card Player #13

• Tim Littlefield – SJ Card Player #2

• Kevin Paskert – SJ Card Player #3

• Nighttrain Schickele – Bobby

Director of Photography:

• Chikara Motomura

Additional Camera Operators:

• Stephen Kopels

• Rob Nilsson

Set Decoration by

• Ken Huie

• Kevin Woodruff

Special Makeup Effects Artist:

• Mira Larkin

Production Manager:

• Mira Larkin

Assistant Director:

• Alix Lacoste

Set Designer:

• Kevin Woodruff

Sound Recordist:

• Ken Huie

Sound Designer / Sound Mixer:

• Al Nelson

Original music:

• Gawain Mathews

Editing by:

• Rob Lee

Legal Counsels:

• John Stout

• George Rush

Associate Producers:

• Keith Malik

• Jonathan Silvio

Producers:

• Larry Lange

• Chikara Motomura

• Rob Nilsson

Executive Producers:

• Carol Richards

• David Richards

• Michelle Anton Allen

• Marshall Spight

Special Thanks:

• Steve Borkenhagen

• John Brosnan

• Greg Carney

• Ralph Mills

• Steve Mori

• George Rush

• Gail Schickele

• John Stout

Film Dedicated To: Johnny Tidwell

Okunrin Meta - David Schickele