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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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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.
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.
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.
"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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
The VUCAVU team is growing: we welcome Yvette Sin, in the position of Digital Education Programming Assistant at VUCAVU. Yvette Sin is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and bookseller based in Toronto. Her award-winning short films have screened internationally, including at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth and TIFF Next Wave...
We are thrilled to announce that Axelle Demus has been hired as VUCAVU’s Educational Sector Outreach Consultant. Axelle is a FOCAS (Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support) postdoctoral fellow at McGill University’s School of Information Studies (archivalfocas.org)....
"Love on The Prairies" brings light to current-day homophobia in Saskatchewan, Canada. We have come far, but there's still a ways to go.
A further examination of self-commodification in the form of a bizarre info-mercial. "What if we invented someone... at a time when resistance and change were becoming paradoxicallyincorpor-related?...
Drawn To uses the suggestion of the erotic -women eating raw liver- to present personal feelings of compulsion and repulsion.
Julia Julep is a short magical tale about Julia, a very young girl who makes peace with her mother’s recent death.
Self as Other was shot in studio with choreographer/dancer Peter Quanz & dancer Kristin Haight. They were directed to hold a difficult balancing pose for as long as possible. Playing between the languages of photography & video, this piece intends to portray the ambiguity of the male and female dancers' bodies.
In October of 1984, the highly acclaimed New York artist, Jack Smith, came to Toronto for a week long performance/Halloween ritual at the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre. This performance, true to Smithesque form, went by three different titles: “Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application,” “Brassieres of Uranus,” and “Impacted Croissants From Outer Space.” Accompanied by the music of Yma Sumac, this short piece remains the last film documentation of this historic event.
milkteeth is an investigation into the imperfection of memory and attempts at preserving the ephemeral.
Increasing numbers of so-called honour crimes are being committed against girls and women in Germany, France, Britain, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Australia.
Jenny Johnson is the story of a girl who takes desperate measures to get her ears pierced.
To hatch is to struggle to get out of an place of idyllic warmth, nourishment and safety before it kills you. A hand, wrapped in layer upon layer of white thread hangs like a cocoon from above. We watch in close-up as the hand fights to free itself.
Denis et Monique partagent un grand amour. Mais la santé de Denis décline depuis plusieurs années, la maladie l'immobilisant de plus en plus.
A shy Asian female engineering graduate struggles to find and keep a job in the 1970s when sexism was rampant in a traditionally white male dominated profession.
Imagine a place smaller in size than Quebec, along the shores of the Mediterranean, where more than 19 religious communities live together. Imagine that some people, in spite of a tormented history, have found the strength and the wisdom not to yield to sectarianism.
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.
"The Law Is in the Seed" is a video of a poem by the same name written by Alex Jacobs, a Mohawk Indian poet from Akwesasne (New York State).
With lyrics by Nishnaabeg poet Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, How to Steal a Canoe tells the story of a young Nishnaabeg woman and an old Nishnaabeg man rescuing a canoe from a museum and returning it to the lake where it was meant to be.
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.
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.
Everyone sees. No one tells.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
Fleeting Encounters
On a hill, a girl re-imagines her journey of survival. Spoken word and layered visuals create an intense urban tale of personal transformation.
In a relationship, two women decide that the white partner will carry her partner’s Indigenous child.
Comprising five hundred images McFadden assembled to investigate the nature of homosocial and queer male relationships, A Separate Peace includes the reading of an eponymous essay the artist wrote in response to this collection and the end of his longterm relationship.
Set to music by Little Hawk, this animated and starkly honest story is a daughter’s tribute to her estranged mother.
An animated documentary web-series about the successes, failures, and incredible confusion trying to date as a genderqueer/trans person.
A woman reconnects with her grandmother's past through drawings done by Daphne Odjig
Inspiré d’un fait divers, "La Sarrasine" aborde le phénomène de l’immigration italienne au Québec et les conflits liés au choc de deux cultures.
This is a film that touches on my thoughts about growing up. I wanted to use things that I think we're appealing to my eye.
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.
One woman’s very personal story about her journey from hardship in Zimbabwe through the rigours of the immigration process to Canada.
A boy becomes music.
Inspired by the 8mm app, Garland's Quiet Steps is an instrumental music video of the artist's experience of living in Vancouver.
"Francophone-hybride" is a short documentary that was shot in Winnipeg during the Festival du voyageur, an annual winter festival which celebrates Manitoba’s Metis, Francophone and First Nations heritage.
Paths is a vibrant trip across the globe, painting an atypical portrait of humanity.
Since the launch of the VUCAVU platform in 2016, we have collaborated with artists, educators, and arts organizations across the country to present a wide variety of independent Canadian films and video art online. Artists are always compensated for the dissemination of their works, and the artworks can often be rented individually for VOD viewing after the programming free period has expired. Programs are always accompanied by bilingual curatorial texts exploring the themes addressed in the selection, and many of them also include recordings of roundtable discussions and conversations with the artists!
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.