Mark Finch (21 October 1961 – 14 January 1995) was an English promoter of LGBT cinema. Having founded and expanded several international film festivals he created the first LGBT film market for distributors, sales agents, and independent film producers.
Early life
Born in Manchester in 1961 Finch never identified with the city, having moved to Cambridge with his mother and siblings after the divorce of his parents. For the rest of his life he was afflicted with severe bouts of depression and it was in his attempts to escape from these that he developed a passionate interest in film and, to a lesser extent, comics. In 1975 he began to publish a photocopied film fanzine entitled Worlds, which also included reviews of comics and science fiction. The magazine was not the success that he hoped and by 1976, after five issues, he owed £80 to the printer: a substantial sum at the time to a 15-year-old schoolboy. He had already attempted suicide once by paracetamol overdose and although he considered another attempt in the face of such debt, he was cheered by a friend's gift of the requisite sum.
Even with income from a part-time job at the Arts Picture House in Cambridge, Finch realised that he could not afford to publish magazines so he joined CAPA, a recently formed amateur press association, which soon merged with the larger BAPA. With typical panache Finch introduced himself to his fellow apans with a zine entitled There are fairies at the bottom of my garden. He later published a single issue of a magazine entitled Equality addressing gender issues in popular culture.
In 1981, Finch left Cambridge to attend the London Polytechnic but he abandoned his studies after another suicide attempt that led to his compulsory attendance at a psychiatric hospital in Barnet. Upon his recovery he attended the University of Warwick where he read for a bachelor's honours degree in film and literature. He chose the university because he wanted to study under Richard Dyer, professor of film there, who had organised the first gay cinema event at the National Film Theatre in 1977. While in Coventry he wrote for a variety of journals, contributing articles about gay themes and camp in Hollywood cinema. Upon graduation he returned to London to work as a programmer for the British Film Institute (BFI). After living a short while in a friend's flat on Long Acre, Finch moved in with his established partner, an Anglican clergyman, in Walworth.
Character
Throughout his life Mark Finch was boyishly charming and often masked his private depression with public bonhomie. His gently camp affectation would occasionally dissolve into tantrum socially but such outbursts were not part of his professional life, which was characterised by lively industry, incisive wit and a passionate affability. He delighted in wordplay and inventive imagery; he never stopped writing absurd narratives, and sharp observations of his surroundings. Such commentaries were sent to friends in small packages with brief covering notes or topped and tailed with the greetings and codas of more formal letters. Soon after his birthday each year after his first arrival in London he would often create an inventive calendar collage for the coming year. Similar publications became commercial products in the mid-1990s but Finch's creations were obviously amateur and intensely personal. They were photocopied, spiral-bound and mailed to friends as pre-Christmas gifts.
Film festivals
In 1984, Elizabeth Hutar founded the Piccadilly Film Festival as an added component to the Piccadilly Arts Festival, which had been in existence for a few years previous. Mark Finch was invited to come to London by Donald Reeves, Rector at St James's Church, Piccadilly, and Peter Pelz, director of the Piccadilly Arts Festival, to join the team working on the festival. In the following years, Finch continued and greatly improved the festival, which ran for a total of 11 years. Finch worked from offices at St James's Church, Piccadilly, from which he developed a huge network of contacts far greater than had been the case at BFI. With his strong interest in gay culture in general and gay cinema in particular, it was inevitable that Finch would make great efforts to develop that aspect of the film festival. In 1986 he established the format that subsequent LGBT film festivals would follow. He then decided that it would be more appropriate to launch a specialist festival rather than overwhelm the more general Piccadilly festival with LGBT movies. In 1988 he led the launch of the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, now known as the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival.