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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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
"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 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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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)....
A woman comes clean in a car wash.
Hold journeys into a still, unsteady space documenting the passage of time through the elements.
We need this. So look for the good and ignore the rest.
A gender-bending heavy metal carnival ride.
A study of light and shadows on a late summer afternoon
TWO/DOH is an evocative poetic pastiche exploring the public and private spaces of desire, and its intersection with the cultural and erotic connections between two women of different origins: Persian/Armenian and South Asian/Sri Lankan.
In this two channel video, the image of cutting and sewing a pure white cloth underpins a narration about clean laundry, comfortable chairs, moths, dust and death, drawing parallels between repetition in the home, and tradition in the House of God.
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.
Jitterbugs is a short video about masks of comedy and tragedy, mounted on wind-up toys, as they dance to old-time jitterbug music and vie for the spotlight.
The performer attempts to apply make-up while wearing electro stimulators on both arms set to maximum power.
How do girls learn about the hair that mysteriously appears on their bodies during puberty?
La petite histoire de Vidéo Femmes en images, textes, extraits vidéos, archives inédites...
A young Aboriginal girl's hopes and dreams are re-negotiated within the walls and tunnels of the institution of education.
In the single-channel video "Hybred", artist Christine Kirouac translates a conversation with her mother into an exploration of the stereotypes and subjectivities surrounding her Métis identity (Cree/Irish).
Treaty X features an audio track and a layering of composited video footage with themes of connection/disconnection to land and waters, treaty rights, and the way capitalism monetizes nature. The Treaty #3 territory comprises 55,000 hectares of land, and annuity payments of $5 have never been adjusted for inflation.
Profiling the affects the Albertan oil fields have on the Indigenous communities nearby.
Hand-drawn illustrations animate this touching personal story about the "60’s Scoop” of Aboriginal children into the Canadian child-welfare system.
Founder: Noun- a person who establishes an institution or settlement. Verb- (of a ship) fill with water and sink. (of a plan or undertaking) fail or break down.
Set to music by Little Hawk, this animated and starkly honest story is a daughter’s tribute to her estranged mother.
A young mother looks to connect with her Aboriginal culture in order to teach her children.
A journalist gets more than bargained for while interviewing a strange local on recent disappearances.
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.
She Draws a Circle reflects on the work of generations of women to interrupt cycles of violence and oppression, looking to the ways in which our spiritual connections to the land and one another help us to hold space for regenerative healing, bringing the hidden to light drawing on that light to encircle each successive generation.
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.
A reflection on distance, grief and memory, through the landscapes...
In A Darkened Room takes place in a surreal world, presenting us with an individual who refuses to accept his evil persona. He faces the incarnation of his darker half, and his denial results in the termination of his being.
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.
Visitors to the Carnegie Library Pittsburgh expound on a myriad of thoughts and opinions, while a caricaturist listens on and captures their likeness.
Manila Road depicts the Filipino community’s significant impact and strong roots in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Fotdella follows Ryan Baer, a Canadian street musician - influenced by San Francisco one-man-band legend Jesse Fuller - as he constructs instruments from salvaged junk and performs in markets, ragtag parades, beach towns and underground spaces.
Who is up there? Who is at the top? This endeavor to move from one place to another was influenced by Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in which a character travels through an unknown landscape.
Première manifestation de l'artiste en Femme toupie, cette oeuvre explore le mouvement comme stratégie de déstabilisation de la normalité.
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.
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.
For almost 40 years, Colette Whiten has quietly and powerfully challenged gender dynamics, political power and mass media imagery... This video portrait was commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts and the IMAA.
After Birth, an inter-generational journey to return to a ceremonial custom of burying the ‘after birth.’ Together three women and their kids walk the land and affirm their intergenerational knowledge and active presence in ancestral memories and matrilineal leadership.
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.