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    Submission Guidelines

    We aim to keep the submission guidelines frill-free and easy. Writers may send in their pieces by emailing us at editor@thelastdvd.com. 

    We accept submissions on a rolling basis, i.e., there are no specific reading periods. Submissions are free. 

    We welcome all genres of prose, as long as they broadly deal with films and adjacent media like music and dance. This includes non-fictional writing, retrospective pieces, and personal essays.

    We are excited to read film reviews as long as they go beyond summarising the plot-line and throwing in a few adjectives to describe the acting and cinematography. For album reviews, we expect you to contextualize the album within the artist’s overall discography and/or  genre. We encourage discussion of techniques as long as they are written in an accessible manner.

    Please scroll down to the ‘Reading List‘ with some of our favourite film writing to have an idea of what kind of pieces we are interested in. 

    Submissions must be a minimum of 800 words and a maximum of 2,000 words. We are, however, happy to make exceptions to the upper limit if the piece requires it.

    Formatting guidelines are commonsensical:

    • Font: EB Garamond
    • Font size: 12
    • If you would like to cite a source, please hyper-link. If this is not possible, please add a References section at the end.

    We are committed to providing a platform for emerging authors and have in the past published first-time writers.
    We are unable to pay our writers at this point but we are actively seeking to change that.

    Unusually for a magazine, we offer editorial feedback on all submitted pieces, including pieces we decline.

    We collaborate with authors and edit accepted pieces to bring more clarity and polish.

    Simultaneous submissions are permitted but please drop an email if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

    We aim to revert within two weeks of submitting to us. Please feel free to drop us a follow-up email after a period of two weeks.

    On publication, writers retain all rights except the right to reproduce the published work elsewhere without our consent and acknowledgement of first-publication on The Last DVD. 

    Reading List

    Curated by The Last DVD team, this is a list of writing on films – their lives and afterlives – that have inspired us. Much like what we aim to do with our magazine, the list contains writings drawn from Indian and world cinema.

    We highly recommend reading the following stand-out pieces we have published before submitting to us: