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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
Digital 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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
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.
In this Maxi-Mexi-Melancolour short, the widow Paramo attempts to prevent further familial tragedy.
A woman paints with her vagina to please the art hungry masses that crowd her gallery and her life.
Ties that bind beyond the last light.
Hortense Gordon was a teacher as well as an artist, and studied abstract painting under one of the great teachers of that movement, Hans Hoffman. Researching Hortense turned up as much about her teachings (and, by extension, Hoffman's) and philosophies as her work, so in the end I felt I was working through the film as a pupil. These are my exercises.
Impressions of a day in primary colours, applied to the eyes via paint, ink and clear leader.
A story of an elderly woman who puts on her jewelry. Each treasured piece brings a reminder of the life she once had, filled with ballet, love, freedom and joy. Her current reality fades and she is renewed in the world of her past.
Glimpse into the contemporary music scene of Kinshasa featuring Brigade Sarbati Orchestra.
Bill Pusztai is a photographer who does portraiture and plants.
An ambient track of evening sounds accompanies rephotographed sketches of the night sky by Jerry Spevak. “The Observatory” turns the heavens on its head: the blackness of space becomes the white of the page, the stars and galaxies precise points of black graphite.
Follow Jackie through the 1960s Toronto Yonge Street music scene, the tabloid rumours and scandals, to the mysterious disappearance. What ever happened to Jackie Shane? You have to watch to find out.
Inspired by the artwork and sculptures of Walter Yarwood. This abstract film was created by carving stamps and applying the images directly onto the film using bleach.
The Body of Others, is an experimental video that engages the tensions between sexuality, identity, visibility, representation and the body, as it relates to queer subjectivity.
A child's imagination is a dangerous thing.
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
This work is a fantasy of freedom, in which a stroll in the park gives rise to an opening up of unstable sexual codes, shifting identities and the empowering game of come and go.
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.
The Traveller is driving at night. Unbeknownst to her, she is about to reach a town where only Big Girls dwell! Who will prevail?
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.
Produced for Much Music’s Word Up program, "What Does a Lesbian Look Like?" examines a plethora of big dyke stereotypes and embraces them. Performed by Shawna Dempsey and a whole whack of gals. Created by Dempsey and Millan.
Built from artifacts recovered from her own then her mother's storage closet, “Confessions of a Compulsive Archivist “follows the filmmaker's tragic-comic struggle to let go of a few things of obviously no use to her. Part found footage film, part camera-less video, it turns stuff that should have been thrown out long ago into a poignant study of the relationship between the creative imagination and our attachments, be they material or emotional.
Balthazar has been friends with siblings Christian and Lyla since childhood. As the trio struggles with coming-of-age in a rural, conservative Canadian town, they must confront escalating desires for one another that threaten to destroy their delicate bond.
The video explores gay Asian men's (GAMs) cruising strategies on American gay sex hookup websites.
"Good Citizen: Betty Baker" follows a civic-minded housewife as she tracks the missing Prince Phillip. This madcap chase takes our heroine Betty from our neighbor's trash, to a strangely exciting all-girls bar, to the arms of a handsome lady golfer. Cherry pie never looked so good.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
Whitewash examines slavery in Canada and its omission from the national narrative. The country prides itself as being the benevolent refuge where enslaved Africans who were brought to United States gained their freedom via the Underground Railroad. That powerful image overshadows the fact that slavery was legal in Canada for over 200 years under both French and British rule.
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.
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.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
An Ojibwe boy falls in love with Grandfather Sun, and recites an Anishinaabe language morning prayer with a few slight alterations. Thank you Grandfather. Miigwetch Nshoomis. I love the feel of your light on my skin. Gotta love that Vitamin D. The language used in this piece is Anishinaabe/Ojibwe.
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.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
There are many memories of childhood that have slipped through the cracks. Most that I can recollect were of the differences in myself in comparison to the others around. Taken away at one week of age from my Indian community and given to a white foster family, my experience of the authentic Indian and where my placement is, within this dream of authenticity, comes from an infected locale.
A group of Vietnamese nationals is making their way to an unknown location in a shipping container to find a better life.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
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.