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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.
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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.
Sydnie Baynes is a Toronto-based multimedia artist and animator currently studying at OCAD University. She holds a BFA in Film Animation and creates work that explores Black history, identity, and self-love through storytelling and digital media. Her artistic practice bridges the worlds of education and independent media, with a focus on accessibility, empowerment, and cultural preservation. Welcome to the team Sydnie!
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.
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 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.
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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
"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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
Night Circled was made by recording video from online surveillance cameras.
Since launching our platform in 2017, VUCAVU has collaborated with several curators and arts organizations from across Canada to present film and media art programs. Each program includes a text exploring the themes addressed, and many also include recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks for you to discover!
A woman creates a runway to fly up into the "clear blue" above an endless landscape.
A manuscript, written in 1954 to aid missionaries working among the Cree speaking natives of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, is the basis for this reflective narrative.
Can a rock band be the village that raises a child? We follow internationally acclaimed Montreal band Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, which has accepted a baby into its touring tribe.
A constructed cinematic space where life and death exist.
An eight year old girl experience a series of traumatic events while quarantined in the infirmary of a residential school for Native children in Canada.
Alice is in a race against time to get basic human rights for her son Kevin, who has Cerebral Palsy.
This is a Photograph of Me is a video poem using Margaret Atwood’s poem of the same name as a script. A gentle visual meandering, the landscape, water, and cabin as metaphor for body, and how we are placed, and place ourselves, psychologically in space.
Several reflections on Franco-Manitoban identity in Winnipeg and its relationship with the French language.
'Undone' explores the troubled language of the tactile body.
A team of beleaguered hockey players and a hybrid prizzly bear interact one bitterly cold night in the depths of winter in a desolate northern settlement.
Trade is an experimental video short exploring concepts of borders and trade, and their relationship to notions of collective history and national identity in the North American colonial context.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
Profiling the affects the Albertan oil fields have on the Indigenous communities nearby.
Perspectives on Western Canadian Métis culture.
Shot improvisationally in 2010, shortly after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, this film takes a lyrical approach to examining recent history and the process of reconstruction in the post-war era.
This video poster for “Idle No More” was inspired by the young students at the Native Education College, that are engaged, often for the first time, in having their voices heard by Canadian society and the Canadian government.
An experimental video meditation exploring the artist’s position and placement in white culture. Continuing his search for identity within a fractured cultural environment, the artist reflects on his history of dislocation and negotiates with the boundaries that include aspects from within both the dominate White society and First Nations history and culture.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
This video uses the word Apocalypse not only in the original Greek sense (revelation) but also with an eschatological bent (the end of all things). End of the world. Loss. A dirge. A visual meditation on the tension between the natural world and what we've made of it.
Paths is a vibrant trip across the globe, painting an atypical portrait of humanity.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
YOU ME HIV AIDS RESPONSIBILITY REALITY a public service announcement for HIV/AIDS awareness. we will walk the land, breathe the air and drink from the stream. i came across the living tree, branches flowing in the breeze its roots adhering to mother earth YOU ME HIV AIDS RESPONSIBILITY REALITY
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
The result of a collaboration between artists Nahed Mansour and Kandis Friesen, this work is based on the original footage from an unrealized documentary found at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Archives in Winnipeg Manitoba.
Véronique bicycles through a looking glass, encountering surreal characters and schisms in reality and time.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
This explores the everyday life of Aster Assefa, a 23 year old, visually impaired Ethiopian mother.
Her anger is like a fever.
Constructed with repetitions and variations in reference to the musical form of a nocturne, Far From is an accumulation of the layers, density and noise of existence. The film evokes the ghosts of lives lived and the traces of lives being lived, rising.
Alone on the road, they pursue highly eclectic musical paths. How did they end up writing, playing and touring solo?
A displaced young girl, her overwhelmed older sister and the superhero that brings them together.
A night of insomnia: I twist and turn as I dissolve into...
YNMD is a found footage film made using archival 16mm prints spliced together on a Steenbeck flatbed editor. Inspired by the DADA poems of Hugo Ball.
An animated instructional video on how one should deal with people whose personalities are characterized by extreme shyness and reserve.
To create "Constars", Donna and Lori improvised for over three hours in a hotel room with several suitcases of costumes and makeup. Their goal was to "find" as many characters as they could wearing each other's clothes, eyeglasses, wigs, etc.