Write for ALT/KINO

ALT/KINO is a curatorial and critical project, based in London, and devoted to exploring experimental film and artists’ moving image from around the world with the aim of highlighting alternative visions and alternative voices. We want to engage with visual media in a way that makes it accessible to a broad range of audiences, from artist filmmakers themselves to general readers who might be discovering this kind of work for the first time. To that end, we aim to publish serious criticism written in an accessible style and intended to really examine what is interesting about a given film, artist, festival, or trend and is less bothered with assessing how objectively ‘good’ something might be - no star ratings here!

What we’re looking for

Given our desire to highlight alternative voices in film form, we’d like that to be the case with our writers as well. As such ALT/KINO strongly welcomes proposals for articles from a broad range of contributors with different approaches and perspectives.

We’re hoping to lever ourselves away somewhat from the demands of a commissioning cycle predicated on novelty and timeliness so we welcome pitches about older works, pitches with new angles on things covered extensively elsewhere, pitches on the overlooked and forgotten. Writing we publish can cover the gamut:

  • straightforward reviews of single films (old or new) but with an emphasis on forms, techniques, themes and not necessarily ‘quality’;

  • critical engagements with trends, motifs or movements that span a selection of films;

  • reflections on specific filmmakers through one or more of their films;

  • festival reports either in the form of round-up via a series of capsule reviews or a more essayistic treatment;

  • interviews with artist moving image practitioners and curators from around the world;

    any other form of writing about this field that you think would be exciting to an audience - we’re open to suggestions and recommendations!

Adventures in form are highly encouraged and we’re keen to publish work that ranges from the more academic to the more experimental in and of itself. ALT/KINO’s raison d'être is to highlight the alternative and so we’re committed to doing the same with the voices we amplify, so we strongly encourage contributors to consider works from less-well represented demographics (people of colour, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, first peoples, people from low-socio-economic backgrounds etc).

We’d also like to prioritise writing by people from those same demographics to broaden the variety of perspectives reflecting on artists’ moving image work.

Have an idea you’d like to pitch to us?

Drop us a line!

Proposals should not exceed 250 words and should succinctly state:

  1. What your article will be about

  2. An idea of the perspective you intend to adopt

  3. What interested you in the idea and why it would be of interest to a broader audience

  4. And a link or attachment with some previous work (you don’t need to have been published anywhere)

Typically, it would be courteous not to send your proposal to other publications while we’re considering it - in practice, the kind of work we tend to cover is fairly sporadically covered elsewhere anyway, but we’ll aim to get back to you as quickly as possible to confirm if we’re interested in progressing the piece.

Send your general proposals to ben[at]altkino.com and address them to our Editor and Founder, Ben Nicholson.

Payment

At ALT/KINO, we understand first-hand that working as a freelance writer is no piece of cake, with individuals so often paid in 'exposure'. It's this personal experience that means we're committed to making sure our writers are paid actual, honest-to-goodness money for their work. One way we could do this is to establish a paywall on the site - but that would mean limiting and restricting access to such writing and the work of the artists featured within, and that's not what we're about. We want to make dialogue and engagement with experimental film as open and accessible as possible.

At the moment, ALT/KINO is a labour of love being funded from our own pockets and so the number of commissions we’re able to make is relatively small, but we do offer a fixed rate of approx. £0.07 per word for our articles, based on a pre-agreed word count. This works out at approximately £35 for a 500-word piece, £50 for a 750-word piece and £70 for a 1000-word piece.

We hope to be able to offer slightly more favourable rates than this in the future depending on the support we receive via Patreon.