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How does it work?
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.
What is MY LIST?
You can create a customized list of films and videos to watch later. To add to your list, browse the catalogue and select the +MY LIST button.
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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
VHS video documentation of The images, such as they are, do have an effect on us: CENSORSHIP dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
"C'est à qui, cette ville?" is a response to the 1984 film, “Ville, Quelle Ville?” This original super 8 film documented various places in Toronto’s east end and reflected upon a young woman’s life in the city.
A shortened version of the synopsis that must be less than 500 characters in length. This teaser appears in a pop up when a user hovers their cursor on a title image in our search or other pages.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
Using an experimental approach that combines biographical, documentary, and fictional techniques, this video-film lets us see through the eyes of someone who, after suffering a cerebral aneurysm, becomes a prisoner of his own body within a time and space beyond his control.
Is Ohio the fish or the phisher? The film’s sexual metaphor extends to artists, who use their own experiences as material for their work, becoming both fish and fisher, harvester and harvested. Ohio’s deeply personal documentary footage and audio recordings serve as the raw material for her exploration of class, art, and the performance of heterosexuality.
Rehearsal is an act of remembering and performance.
Perceptions of an earth-bound garden.
This film features a collection of interviews with Chilean textile workers whose experiences stitch together the country’s history of resistance.
A boreal forest, in the fall. A man wearing a face mask is on the watch. Camouflaged in the bush, he holds his gun at the ready. Is he a serial killer or just a trophy hunter? He’s neither. He’s an artist waiting for an animal and that elusive moment when the image for a work will come to him.
The Presider
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
"Slumberparty 2018" is a remake of a 1984 Super 8 film called Slumberparty made by the Positive Pornographers, a mostly queer collective of Toronto-based artists, activists and sex-workers. Commissioned by A-Space Gallery's "Developing a Women's Erotic Language on Film" workshop, Slumberparty was made as a direct intervention in Toronto’s feminist porn debates.
A young man takes break from work, skateboarding along to see his favourite Winnipeg murals.
Four videos made during the pandemic in 2021.
A simple action is transformed through film into an emotive, voyeuristic piece.
Loveletter to Saint Boniface is a bilingual experimental documentary that unravels personal and community memories regarding racism and homophobia while exploring notions of language and culture.
Compiled with images of storefronts of beauty parlors and barber shops from Chinatown and the Lower East Side on New York City, the video takes the viewer into the almost mythical hair culture of the local community. Accompanied by a soundtrack of "Heart Sutra" chanting from a Buddhist monastery, "Hair Cuts" explores the interior of human hearts through the architectural mapping of sites seen.
This video tells the story of a big boned butcher who finds passion and purpose. Both the public and the private lives of this “strange animal” are documented with the same mix of reverence and glee found in the exposés Bull-Dyke mocks. However, because we see the world through the eyes of the subject, this fictionalized history is filled with all the joy, pain and ambivalence each of us experiences.
My Father, Francis: a father and daughter collaborate. A comment on kinship, diasporic labour, devotion and the factory as a site of creativity.
In “Milkman,” a seated male figure sits staring endlessly ahead, his gaze locked on the viewer. Milk is streaming from his nipple and into a glass that he holds in his left hand. The continuous flow of milk never seems to fill the glass. The sound of the flowing milk creates a human fountain out of this portrait.
An animated documentary web-series about the successes, failures, and incredible confusion trying to date as a genderqueer/trans person.
A woman, a transgender man, and their cat travel towards a mysterious roadside attraction known as "The Thing.”
In 2014 Lydia’s son, Colten Pratt, went missing off the streets of Winnipeg.
Recording artist Troy Jackson calls for sassy, irreverent voices to join a chorus of queers, who demand justice and equality for all.
Récit ironique d'un corps qui a perdu toute maîtrise sur son visage...
Part of the ongoing “Supa” series, Supa Natural is inspired by both the beautiful landscape of British Columbia and its abundant UFO sightings.
In “African Mayonnaise,” the 6th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, Celebrity gets Fucked.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
A spoken word poem and minimalist audio track about a sexy highland stream, a love letter to the beauty found in nature, and the mysterious way beauty is suffused in the natural world, written in English and Anishinaabemowin.
A place called home, a North End poem.
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.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
This work deals with the idea of sacred and profane and the Catholicism as an instrument of colonization.
This intricate stop-motion animation interlaces Canada’s colonial past with writer-director Amanda Strong’s personal family history — and illuminates Cree, Métis, and Anishinaabe reclamation of culture, language, and Nationhood. (Danis Goulet, TIFF)
This film is available in French only.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one's outwardly appearance.
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.