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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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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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
"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.
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.
Open Water is an immersive short documentary film about a 61-year-old woman's attempt to swim across the largest freshwater lake in the world.
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!
Through excavated footage and narration, Sira examines the displacement of a family, beginning with the event the catapulted their exodus from Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion.
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.
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.
Visitors to the Carnegie Library Pittsburgh expound on a myriad of thoughts and opinions, while a caricaturist listens on and captures their likeness.
Within the mystical spaces of a Judaic self-doubt, falls a dreaming painter from the fallen Polish city of Lodz.
"You're just a woman.... smile and relax."
Brown Town Muddy Water is a documentary about the Indigenous Musicians that lived, died, prospered and survived Winnipeg's notorious main street strip during the 1960’s.
The guertita, a white American woman, and the prietita, a South Asian Canadian woman, have an affair while on a tourist trip to Mexico.
In "Grandma Smokes for Jesus’ Love", Erika MacPherson is engaged in a dialogue with the stories of her grandma.
Out on the open prairie, how could you possibly feel hemmed in? Through the dialogue between a bird and a woman, the story of a woman’s situation and love relationship unfolds. As it does, so does the issue gossip as a tool of conformity to a community’s morals, expectations and the idea that truth is a very delicate and disposable item. This is all approached with a good sense of humour - the lighter something tastes, the more of it you can eat.
An incident at the fridge. Some floozy, a gal in waiting, a gal in a camisole, a guy in a dress, a gal in a kilt, and a gal in charge.
3 groups of 3 young women of different ages (sixteen, nineteen and twenty one years old) question their relation towards femininity and the socially constructed notion of gender that stifles them.
In an Algeria divided between tradition and modernity, two young adults named Karim and Hadjer could not love each other free.
After years of repression, an old woman's common sense goes head-to-head with the fantastic imagination of her inner child, who yearns to be free.
Captured over five years in 18 communities, INDIAN TIME paints a personal, up-to-date portrait of 11 of Quebec's Indigenous peoples. With some forty people speaking in turn, INDIAN TIME makes for exceptional encounters and immerses viewers in "Indian time" with their eyes and hearts.
Perspectives on Western Canadian Métis culture.
Home deals with the conflicting worlds of Aboriginal people, the view of the urban Aboriginal and the view of the rural Aboriginal.
"Bloodstorm" considers the paralells between the unpredictability of a storm and the turmoil of living with HIV/AIDS.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
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.
Short experimental, found footage film.
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.
Grand Mother Tongue pairs poetry, spoken in Plains Cree, and breath with the intimate imagery of strawberries being consumed bite-by-bite, and finger lick for finger lick.
The Weaver's Circle is a short documentary film portrait of an environmental artist working in the downtown eastside of Vancouver.
A woman deals with the death of her mother through self-annihilating tendencies.
The Traveller is driving at night. Unbeknownst to her, she is about to reach a town where only Big Girls dwell! Who will prevail?
"Remote Sensing" is an exploration of the canon of sensations. The video pushes the limits of sensation and defines the detached way we gather information and adapt to fresh information. Or rather, how we react to over-stimulation.
Butch women discuss the sometimes complicated relationship they have with their breasts.
My oldest and dearest stuffed animal, Ocean Rabbit, was given to me following a bizarre and tragic incident concerning my sister's imaginary pet frog. Based on a true story, The Origin of Ocean Rabbit is an animated tale recounting how a bizarre and tragic incident concerning my sister’s imaginary pet frog led my aunt to give me my oldest and dearest stuffed animal, Ocean Rabbit.
The Presider
This film recounts the transmission of an inheritance within a family, my family. It is not the transmission of material riches but the way in which the life of a parent can determine in their children choices which influence the construction of their identity.
Nobody wants to tell Skye, a nine-year-old girl, what is happening in her family. She sees doctors come and go, and she knows something has to be going on...
A lyrical meditation on moon cycles and the female body
Zuma explores the social construction of shadow mothers.
The fear of bridges.
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.