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NEED is film #6 in the nine film 9@ Night cycle. A cinema portrait of 40-50 inner city characters living in the San Francisco Tenderloin circa 2001-2005 cast from the Tenderloin yGroup Actor's Ensemble. NEED goes into the shady alleys and smoky bars explored in many films with "noir" pedigree and genre intentions but takes a different tack. It tries to avoid the stereotypes of underworld life and the conventions of crime shows and detective series. Instead of "satin sheets, satin pillows" fatalism. it 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. Petite struggles to hold onto her relationship with Tyrone, a pool hustler, while Jane works as a stripper in the Gold Club. Lou, Jane's mother and a heroin addict, is a renegade aging prostitute who works the streets and bars in defiance of the pimps. Francesca manages an escort service and does phone sex. The film concentrates on the shared experiences which hold these women together and the strains of the business which threaten their friendship. In a profession which thrives on fantasy and martyrdom they struggle to hold onto their reasons for caring for each other.

A small band of dysfunctional renegade homeless people led by charismatic "Pan" befriends a lonely youngster, a fatherless "Bobby" who stumbles upon their homeless encampment nestled by the railroad tracks. The busy socialite mother, Barbara instantly disapproves of "Bobby" & "Pan's" budding friendship, while secretly and somewhat unwillingly developing feelings for Pan.

Convicted counterfeiter Ben Malafide gets out of prison after 20 years and ends up in the Tenderloin. Seeking the bare essentials to make ends meet, he confronts the Information Age, a barrage of images and noises that offer neither knowledge nor heart.

Certain he's been betrayed, Malafide leaves his lover and hops freights to Reno to find a Cherokee healer he met in prison named People T. Joined by a black homeless man named Johnny, they set out into the desolate beauty of the Nevada desert.

Estranged from his longtime girlfriend, suburban accountant Perry wanders into the Tenderloin at night and is drawn into a series of dangerous and erotic encounters.

"We're taking back 9/11 with a flashy, forceful feature that surveys safety in a time of orange alerts. SECURITY began with an unforeseen death on the streets of Berkeley that provoked dismay in a band of student actors. Activated by this unexpected turn, the actors looked inward and moved outward, improvising interlaced stories that examine vulnerability in dangerous time." - Steve Seid, PFA [Direct Action World Cinema sponsored by the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California.]