We're sorry, but our site requires Javascript to be enabled. If you would like instructions on how to enable Javascript, please click here.
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.
The VUCAVU team, in consultation with our content partners, have made the decision to slowly shut down our view-on-demand (VOD) services on our platform to make way for a new direction in our operations. VOD changes will occur on VUCAVU over the coming months. As we make changes to the platform with our developers, we will periodically update this page and share news in our regular communications.
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.
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.
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
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 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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
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.
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: CENSORSHIP dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
"This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Once again Sisler examines the physical and psychological realms of being a woman through the use of gesture as narrative. Here we are introduced to a woman demoralized from her unsuccessful job search. Sisler looks at the cultural imperative of Òpoise and our public presentation as women.
"This film is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." "La naissance d'une messe" met en lumière le travail des comédiens et artisans réunis autour d'André Brassard pour la création de la pièce de Michel Tremblay, Messe solennelle pour une pleine lune d'été.
This film is available in French only.
A meditation on (im)mortality, mediated by a lifetime of images
This high-speed ride down mountain roads near volcanic Gunung Salak in West Java is a final fling by an aging motorcycle road racer.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
An impressionistic elegy for Otto Weininger, Vienna's most infamous self-hating Jew.
A meditation experience to unlock and reconcile with one's past in an effort to imagine a future actualized self.
The real encloses the remembered. A poetic look at the distorting / defining effect of memory.
Artist Talk with Nelson Wu
A charming portrait of Winnipeg filmmaker Curtis Wiebe who creates puppets and props for all of his films.
milkteeth is an investigation into the imperfection of memory and attempts at preserving the ephemeral.
ars memorativa is an experimental documentary in four chapters that examines what is left behind when someone passes away and how memory traces emerge from the remaining artifacts and memories. the four people intersected with the directors life in a variety of ways and their stories are shared in a mix of forms: hand processed celluloid, digital animation, audio interview and home movies.
What of our homes lasts within us? Shea stretches the answer across a diaspora.
"In ‘(ab)NORMAL’ the relationship spectrum, from paranoid avoidance to smothering and overwhelming attention, is traced through four pixilated sketches." - Toronto International Film Festival
"This film is available in French only.Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Sur un toit, une photographe croque le paysage. Soudain, un homme entre dans le champs de la caméra et la dérange. Que se passe-t-il ensuite?
A transwoman puts on makeup. The makeup and her movements are a metaphor for her transformation, as well as the dialectical revealing and concealment of herself from the scrutiny of the outside world.
Animated magazine cutouts of two men having sex lead into appropriated gay porn images, blurred to the point where they become abstract colour and motion.
"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.
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.
“Transforming FAMILY” jumps directly into an ongoing conversation among trans people about parenting. It's a beautiful snapshot of current issues, struggles and strengths of transexual, transgender and gender fluid parents (and parents-to-be) in North American society today.
The “Manholes” series takes a pan of a single male figure and fragments it into a grid of peepholes. The microscopic mapping of the body is intimate yet clinical. The cascading body parts create a kaleidoscope of changing skin tones. It is difficult to find the point of origin on the subject’s body, though occasionally signifiers make it possible; an eye, a nipple or the toes suddenly orient the viewer.
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to have super powers?
Submerged Queer Spaces is a documentary feature that examines queer history through an approach of urban archeology.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
“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.
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
still is part of an ongoing body of work that addresses the persistence of colonial structures in contemporary Canada through a critical white settler lens. These works confront facets of this overarching concern through a practice of performing interventions into the land/scape and tampering with iconic elements of Canadian visual culture. Integrating the residue of an off-camera performance within a quintessentially ‘Canadian’ landscape as a politically, culturally and historically mitigated r
A split-screen video of the Trans-Canada Highway and the single Access Road on our Reserve, the Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation / Nezaatiikang, located north-west of Thunder Bay. Before the completion of the Access road in the late 2000's, the Reserve was only accessible by water. The roads work as metaphor of Colonization by revealing disparity between Canada and Indigenous Nations.
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.
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.
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.