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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
Discover our new VUCAVU.education postcards designed by Emily 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.
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.
"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.
A film crew journeys to resurrect a lost film, taking it to the communities where the film was originally shot. Images come to life; people recognize faces, landscapes, and lost traditions.
Maddin's film incorporates found footage to provide a glimpse of wartime Berlin. Crowds of soldiers march in formation, play instruments and engage in training drills. Burning fires and a frantic pace contrast with the organized movements of the troops, perhaps foreshadowing the destructive events to come.
More than twenty protest vigils, composed of hundreds of women in black, take place every week at the same hour throughout Israel.
Exploring the legacy of the Indian Residential School system by looking at its history, present conditions and hopes for the future.
With a little help from his friends, bearded and larger- than-life artist Michael Olito assumes the persona of Winnipeg’s Mayor, Susan Thompson. After his behind the scenes transformation, the “Mayor” gives a one time only appearance.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
Behold the salvation the American socio-economic system has prepared for you.
A spoken word poem about Indigenous issues from the perspective of three different Native women.
“In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet launched a violent coup in Chile that overthrew the Marxist elected president Salvador Allende. Thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and exiled as a result. My family was among the many that were exiled in Canada.” - Francisca Duran In this experimental, autobiographical film, a young woman remembers and recounts difficult childhood memories of the 1973 coup in Chile when her family was forced into exile.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
Inkster’s beautiful fiction references the destruction of Africville on the outskirts of Halifax in 1969. Four characters speak directly to the came ra about their lives and sexuality. This use of direct address says docu mentary, but the actors speak Inkster’s bittersweet words.
It's a journey most of us are familiar with. One that starts with lust, passion, intense love and joy and eventually dwindles down the road of routine, familiarity and day to day banalities.
Porn star, Ryan Russell is rotoscoped in this performance about ego and Eros. In the tradition of the peepshow a private sexual performance is made public. A lone figure enters the frame, smirks at the camera and gets down to business. Is he simply there to entertain himself or is this a performance for the viewer? It eventually goes terribly wrong when he quite literally drowns in his own ego.
The Long Form Lesbian Census polls the Toronto lesbian community to find out important statistics.
A hand-processed diary film about memory, family and loss told through snapshots and landscapes in and around Ontario. Music by Sam Phillips. Screenings include: 2008 Berlin International Film Festival (in Forum Expanded section), 2008 Rotterdam International Film Festival. "nostagia isn't what it used to be, i can only picture the disappearing world when you touch me"
No Safe Words was created at the UBC Thunder Stadium to be broadcast on a JumboTron screen during Toronto’s 2008 Pride Parade and festivities.
A hard-hitting work that, to paraphrase Jean Genet, gives a voice to the unexpressed.
That formidable force of conservation officials, Lesbian National Parks and Services, presents three portraits of lesbian species in crisis. Not unlike the renowned 1970s Hinterlands Who's-Who series, these public service announcements point to the perils of habitat loss and poaching. The Marxist Feminist, the Lesbian Separatist and the Bull-Dykus Americanus are featured in this parody of nature education.
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.
“Borders” is an intimate exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: top surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. “Borders” is available as a single-channel work or as an extended installation.
“Boy” is a short film that touches on sexual orientation, homophobia and acceptance. An animated figure swings at the viewer while a robotic voice whispers so that no one around him can hear. Slowly descending into self-doubt, he questions his choices and what he has become.
A young man pursues the apparition of a loved one who disappeared one turbulent night.
A cryptic vision of the second coming of our maker...but did we make the maker?
A gentle warning from the post-human, non-transcendent sentinel of the threshold.
Based on a true story - from 2053 AD!
A science fiction comedy by John Paizs.
Explorations of an Unexpected Time Traveler imagines a narrative where a woman from some undisclosed point in the past experiences continual unexplained and uncontrollable shifts in time and space.
Two young women journey from the outskirts of the city to a radioactive area deep in the woods.
A PSA for a shopping complex transmitted from a doomed alternate Earth.
The film depicts a society controlled by an autonomous system.
A prairie farming family confronts an epic flood in the year 2040, after runaway climate change accelerates rainfall beyond all predictions.
We know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man. [adapted from Orson Welles' adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds (Orson Welles And Mercury Theatre On The Air, Columbia Broadcasting System, 8:00 To 9:00 P.M., Sunday, October 30, 1938)]
A fragment taken from a well known Science Fiction film is prematurely aged.
Buckminster Fuller appears in a gas station parking lot.
VUCAVU has collaborated with hundreds of artists, arts organizations and educators from across the country to present moving image based programming which are often available for free for a limted duration. Artists receive screening fees, and artworks can be rented individually for VOD viewing after the programming free period expires. Programs are accompanied by bilingual curatorial texts and many include recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks.
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.