Interview: A look inside Birmingham's 90 second film festival Expresso 90
I took a trip to the West Midlands to experience a film festival where every film was only 90 seconds long
It’s a Thursday evening, and the last remnants of the winter breeze gust through the streets of Birmingham. It’s a chilly one, but it hasn’t deterred film lovers from making their way to the city’s creative quarter.
Inside Digbeth’s Custard Factory creative hub, people of all ages have started arriving at the humble independent Mockingbird Cinema. However, they are not here to watch their very own Tommy Shelby’s final outing on the big screen, but instead for Expresso 90, a film festival solely for 90-second-long films.
Created by lecturers Dan Finnemore and Matt Prentice, the festival was originally started for their students to see their work seen on the big screen. It worked to great effect as one of their former students, Tommy Read, decided to start it back up after the pandemic hit.
“Not only for me, but for a lot of students, it was building a lot of confidence and just seeing your film on the big screen was a boost for it,” Tommy says. He is now the co-founder of the IMA festival based in the West Midlands. In his newfound role, the first thing he wanted to do was bring back Expresso 90.
“Top of the list was, ‘let’s bring back Expresso’. We wanted to try to share that opportunity again with other people. Luckily, we’ve got some very nice people who obviously support us as well. It wouldn’t be possible on my own,” he says.
He was right to do so. As more people arrive, the atmosphere increases. Past film-makers are here to support first-timers who nervously wait outside. It has grown from strength to strength since returning to the streets of Birmingham, now currently in its seventh year and returning to a sold-out crowd.
If you’re thinking the 90-second run time is another way to try to accommodate the younger generations’ ever-decreasing attention span, don’t worry. The run time was picked as it was the perfect mix of being challenging for veteran film-makers and digestible for first-time creatives.
“It was really achievable for students to be able to do, but it’s also a challenge. Anyone who has made a film in 90 seconds that actually makes sense and is coherent will know it’s really difficult to do,” Tommy says.
“I always found I really liked the balance of it. It was open for people to have a go who had never made a film before in their lives. But if you’ve made loads of films, then it’s something you can get together with a bit of a crew and go, ‘all right, let’s try and enter this thing and let’s see what’s possible.”
It had been quite the start to the day for Tommy. The event consists of judges who award two winners at the end of the night and then have a talk with the people in the audience to help them at the start of their careers.
Usually that’s the case. In the morning, three of the four judges had to drop out due to illness and prior engagements. Not ideal. Luckily, the remaining judge, Matt Taylor, the Creative Director and Co-Director of Method in Motion, was able to pull in a favour and get one more judge in.
I’m sure no one was more glad than he was when an excited buzz started to fill the air, and people arrived in their numbers.
There were 22 films on display for the day, and none alike. Filmmaker Maria Audert Samudro took an animated route with their short Friends With Pigs. Lewis Hooper chose a comedy with his short Butter Bunny’s — a film about killer bunny cookies — and Ismay Sanders decided to take a more vulnerable route with The Queer Archive.
Each film exuded individuality and a high level of quality. The range of shorts on display is what Tommy loves so much about the event. “What I really love about this festival is that it gives you that freedom to say, I’m just going to have a go,” he says.
One of the filmmakers giving it a go was Jason Kok. He is a student at Kingston University and had the festival recommended to him by one of his lecturers. His film was called The Last Shot, a short about someone trying to beat their friend at basketball.
“As we only have 90 seconds, there are limitations for us as to how we explain the plot of our story within a short time, and meanwhile still make it interesting. It’s very fun and satisfying after we’ve made it,” he says.
The festival awards a Best Young Filmmaker and an overall winner. Tommy’s bad luck continued as the first winner, Clarissa Kumala, who won best young filmmaker for Full of Sh*t, was not in attendance. Luckily, the overall winner, Maxwell Cavenham for The Nine Lives of Charlie Dickinson, was in attendance to receive the award.
The minds behind Expresso 90 are excited to keep helping filmmakers get their start. That’s what Sammy Ha, Co-Founder of IMA Festival, loves the most about it. “It’s so nice seeing the reaction of the filmmakers. I look back at the photographs after each event, and it’s nice seeing the smiling faces. Watching people meeting each other for the first time and being able to facilitate them seeing their film on the big screen for the first time is really special,” she says.
Tommy hopes it keeps growing in the future, but for now, he just hopes next year is smoother sailing than this one.