Nirvana Street Murder

Nirvana Street Murder was one of the low-budget, crime-themed independent films shot in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in the early 1990s. The two films were Nirvana Street Murder (1990) and Holidays on the Yarra River (1991). At least eight crew members worked on both pictures, including producer Fiona Cochrane, who served as head producer on both projects.

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Nirvana Street Murder was the first feature-length film directed by director Aleksi Vellis.

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Nirvana Street Murder was the penultimate appearance in a feature film by the much-loved Australian actress Sheila Florance. Her final one was Paul Cox's A Woman's Tale (1991), for which she won the 1991 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

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The film was initially financed as a fifty-minute short film. It was listed as a 50-minute short in the Production Survey published in the November 1988 issue of the Australian film magazine 'Cinema Papers'.

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The film's closing epilogue reads: ''Later that day, Luke O'Hagan was arrested by Victoria Police at Tullamarine Airport. He was subsequently charged with the murder of Boady O'Hagan and is currently awaiting trial in custody at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. He maintains his innocence.''.

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The film's world premiere was held in June 1990 at the Melbourne International Film Festival in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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The film's editing process during post-production reportedly took about eight months.

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According to the film's screen notes for its 1990 Melbourne International Film Festival entry, the production, which had initially begun principal photography as a fifty-minute short film, later "expanded the already insufficient budget to a feature film because they saw that the material would justify it".

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The film was shot on 16 mm film stock and then blown up to 35 mm for theatrical distribution.

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The film was a Vellis/Cochrane production financed by the Creative Development Branch of the Australian Film Commission (AFC) and sponsored by Delta Petroleum Pty Ltd.

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Nirvana Street Murder was the first cinema film of Australian actress Tamara Saulwick, who played Penny. Although the actress later worked in Australian television, this film remained her first, last and only cinema film [as of May 2023].

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Nirvana Street Murder was the first feature film of Australian actor and comedian Russell Gilbert, who played Boss.

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The film's opening gag appears in its disclaimer: "The characters, events, companies, firms and institutions depicted in this motion picture are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events, firms, companies or institutions past or present is entirely a bonus."

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Director Aleksi Vellis won the inaugural Greg Tepper Memorial Award with this film in 1992; the award is given in the Australian state of Victoria to a filmmaker judged to have made a significant contribution to film production.

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Filmmaker Aleksi Vellis took on several roles on this production: he was editor, director and screenwriter.

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This Australian film was never released on DVD or Blu-Ray, but it was released there on home video cassette in the early 1990s.

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It was the first feature film produced by Australian film and video producer Fiona Cochrane.

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The film was inspired by a newspaper article read by writer-director Aleksi Vellis, about a strange attempted murder in which a husband tried to kill his wife by drowning her in a waterbed.

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The relationship between the film's two main brother characters, played by Mark Little and Ben Mendelsohn, was inspired by John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men (1937).

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In September 1990 the film won the Best "New Australian Film" award at the short-lived Frames Film Festival in Adelaide, South Australia, held by the Media Resource Centre.

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The closing credits list the locations provided "courtesy of": Robert Hamilton Wilson, P&R Meats, Melbourne Squatters Union, Susie Forge, Westgarth Primary School, Roma Coffee Bar, Melbourne Zoo, Footscray Community Arts Centre, Ron Jones & Sons, Collingwood Football Club, Victoria Park Primary School, the Shrine of Remembrance, Dandenong Sales Gardens, the Botanic Gardens, Lennox Swan Pharmacy and Stavros Vellis.

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