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VUCAVU works on a video-on-demand (VOD) basis. To rent a film or video, browse the catalogue, view details for individual films and videos, and click RENT when you find something to watch.
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VUCAVU.education is a streaming platform that gives educators and students access to a curated selection of independent Canadian film and video art spanning more than 50 years. The shared catalogue includes documentary, fiction, experimental, and animation titles from artists across Canada, offering many unique views into the country’s cultural landscape.
VUCAVU.education is an initiative of the VUCAVU.com platform.
Fanny meets her high school friends for the annual Switch & Bitch Party.
A young songwriter seeks out her folk idol in a sleepy lakeside village, only to become enmeshed in a secretive society whose rituals safeguard the threshold between worlds.
This is video compilation is part of the educational guide produced as part of Archive/Counter-Archive’s (A/CA) Case Study, Through Feminist Lenses: Video Works at Groupe Intervention Vidéo with Groupe Intervention Vidéo.
Follow along with Spirit Bear as he realizes the importance of learning history to make better decisions now and for future generations of kids and cubs.
This playful, poignant & memorable short shadow play, where humans take from forests whatever they desire - leaving nothing. A collaborative film by a Canadian filmmaker and a Japanese visual artist.
A look at the community response to the murder of Nirmal Singh Gill, a caretaker at the Guru Nanak Gurudwara in Surrey BC by 5 white supremacist skinheads in 1998.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
While narrating letters written to her ex, a woman attempts to cast away the lingering shadows of the relationship and overcome feelings of rejection and failure.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
VHS video documentation of The images, such as they are, do have an effect on us: PORN Dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
Filmed sporadically and intuitively during the summer months of 2020 and 2021, Homunculi is a recontextualization of a personal archive of hand processed 16mm “home movies” and various cinematographic experiments.
Chilean refugee Daniela (Carmen Aguirre) wants to travel back to Chile to learn more about her family as her father is reluctant to talk about his past. But she is about find out much more than she expected.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
Did you know that many First Nations schools get less money than provincial schools? Shannen Koostachin, a young leader from Attawapiskat First Nation, knew this was wrong, and so does Spirit Bear.
ZAGROS follows the creation of carpets across the Western mountains of Iran, revealing the colours of a culture through labour.
In this experimental documentary, an animation the filmmaker’s father made with Norman McLaren decades ago becomes a meditation on art, invention, fathers and daughters.
Couplings presents images of 38 men and women both as individuals and in various configurations. It tweaks received values which may underlie assumptions and prejudices about what is and isn’t appropriate in intimate relationships.
An intimate look at Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe’ s work, and more specifically Materia Prima, a project for the abandoned garden of an historical landmark in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
On a cold fall evening, Leila is left alone to tend the family convenience store. A series of strange clients keep her in a constant state of apprehension. Language and cultural barriers also contribute to the making of a nerve-racking evening.
In this Maxi-Mexi-Melancolour short, the widow Paramo attempts to prevent further familial tragedy.
"I watched a movie one afternoon and this is the story of that movie." A fictional story is combined with my personal archives of photos.
A series of tableaux vivants revisit the paths that have been traced by a diagnosis.
A 70s TV sitcom set around a young group of artists.
If he does possess powers, what are their limits?
In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury.
Invasive behaviours accumulate on the surface of water bodies and on the film itself.
Shot at the Chinatown Basketball Tournament in New York City, August, 1997, Season of the Boys is about the myth of a “boy season” that all men have been waiting for, which comes just once and only for a brief moment. Mixing the unlikely subjects of athletics, voyeuristic desire and poetic expression, Season of the Boys explores how the culture of youth and beauty is constructed and influences us from the intimate viewpoint of the videomaker.
disobedience is the visually lush journey of a mother on the lam. Warned by her three-year old son to " never go down to the end of the town", she nonetheless ventures far beyond the confines of home, heterosexuality, and the physical world. In punishment for her infatuation with an operatic Valkyrie, she is arrested, interned, stolen by pirates, and x-rayed by a book-eating bull-dyke. She loses her eye (and her way home), but in the end receives the gift of self.
At times painful and disturbing, Still Sane's overriding theme is ultimately one of defiance and survival: we can maintain our choices, even in the face of literally mind-numbing oppression.
Gay dating in a nutshell.
Butch women discuss the sometimes complicated relationship they have with their breasts.
Pixel Pose depicts a lesbian’s life in three stages: the single lesbian, the lesbian couple and lesbian family. This movement based video uses queer text and carnal poses to explore issues of lesbian intimacy and representation.
The boy and the puppy are innocent one moment, and experienced the next (sexually). The line between outward innocence and inner corruption begins to dissolve, revealing a beautiful rot and decay. This video is essentially a running parallel with the proverbial Garden of Eden.
“Dear Sis, I am sitting on the subway and all of a sudden, I have this urge to write to you...”, here begins an apology letter written from one sister to another. Starting with the issue of sibling rivalry, the video is a simple and straightforward examination of the connection and the distinction between one person and the next in the world we live in -- talking us further into the greater subject of humanity.
A noir melodrama about a librarian's struggle as she encounters the capricious behaviour of a would-be kennel owner who is searching for a reference.
"La vie en pellicule" is film about a promise I made my son at his birth. He was born at the end of the year 2006 when negatives of family snapshots and precious moments are rare. I promised him that he would grow up with negatives as records of our lives.
A privileged look at the beginning of a relationship, capturing the moment the moon rose in their eyes.
Vi-a lesbian and artist-is heartbroken after her lover, Charlie, leaves her. She spends her days and sleepless nights in Charlie's pyjamas, alternately painting her “inner storm cloud” and abstract images of vaginas. These are strewn about her home amid other signs of her unraveling life.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
A group of Vietnamese nationals is making their way to an unknown location in a shipping container to find a better life.
WÎSKACÂN is an experimental contemporary dance film utilizing Bunraku-style tabletop puppetry and object performance. Video, Puppet Design, Performance, and Music by Tyson Houseman. This project was made as part of Canada Council for the Arts Digital Originals initiative, and I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Riverside Queerness reveals hard moments in the Prairies' shadowed queer history. Three storytellers navigate muddy waters that is Manitoba's subconsciousness; where truth is blurred by the power of the currents.
Gaawiin Gego [Got No Nothing] is based on a rhyme in Ojibwe that my great aunt taught me, the lyrics reference the blues and a Nina Simone song. The audio track is layered over top of found video footage from Lac Des Mille Lacs, which is the lake beside our Reserve
This video interrogates how subjectivities, political stances, and modes of social engagement formed elsewhere contribute to our positioning within the local, cultural landscape of Vancouver.
“The Script” presents a collage of revealing moments pulled from material in the Prelinger Archives, an online collection of over 11,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial and amateur) films made between the 1910s – 1980s.
One Story was originally produced as part of the Community Play “Travois” in 1994. It is a look into the various complicated and overlapping stories that inform the current urban and traditional culture of the First Nations peoples. The questionable politics that dictate Status and the paternalism of Treaty Days are juxtaposed with the pow wow, the voice of graffiti and the street.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
A short film on the subject of Indigenous Love. What is (romantic) love? And what does it mean to you? 8 couples share their thoughts
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
A place called home, a North End poem.
Since the launch of the VUCAVU platform, we've collaborated with hundreds of artists, arts organizations and educators from across Canada to present bilingual curated and educational programming online. Artists always receive royalties and screening fees from these programs and they often include additional educational resources such as recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks. After the paid or free programming period expires, available artworks can be rented individually.
We're delighted to launch A/CA's Educational Guide series; a project and research network dedicated to the activation and preservation of audiovisual archives created by Aboriginal peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), Black communities and people of color, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities.
Discover our new VUCAVU.education postcards designed by Emil Woudenberg from Strike Design Studio, featuring a still from Caroline Blais’ film “Étoiles” (available for VOD on VUCAVU!). We’re pleased to pay Caroline for using their image and are dedicated to building VUCAVU in community with artists.