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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.
What is MY LIST?
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.
This internship offers hands-on experience working on an innovative project that is at the intersection of digital strategy for the arts and education sectors. The successful candidate will perform tasks associated with communications, outreach, educational online program development, marketing, web content management and other tasks as needed. Application deadline: September 2, 2025 (End of day)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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!
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.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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 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.
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.
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!
Funambule moves between the open expanses of the grasslands to the dark shadows of a cedar grove where a traveler and a hunter beckon us to the heart of the forest.
A woman sets off on a journey to establish her career just as she learns that she is pregnant. This twist in her destiny leads her down an unexpected path.
Between heaven and earth, on a roof in Saint-Petersbourg, someone with a broken heart is thinking.
A Xerox animation over a phone call with a friend.
In three parallel worlds, two lovers meet, lust, disappoint and drink coffee and it's time for the cycle to change.
Inspired by the 8mm app, Garland's Quiet Steps is an instrumental music video of the artist's experience of living in Vancouver.
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.
Walking nude along the dusty railroad tracks of life, a woman discovers a sweet decorous Cake in her path.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
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.
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).
An ode to my daily environment.
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.
A girl with the power to heal conducts a ceremony that attracts a shapeshifter.
A home movie of Cree woman hunting is saved from being lost forever, but how does it compare to official Canadian history of northern Manitoba?
Set to music by Little Hawk, this animated and starkly honest story is a daughter’s tribute to her estranged mother.
In 1943, within a few days, 25 people died at the Qarmaarjuit camp, on Baffin Island, Nunavut, which is over half of the population of this Inuit community. Two survivors from this tragedy, Ruth and Elisapie, return to the location to pay final respects to their family.
An inside look at how one jingle dress dancer physically and mentally prepares for competition pow-wows.
A lively look at the lives and musical roots of Aboriginal women from across North America.
September 2013. The Court ruling is reached. Almost a quarter million Dominicans of Haitian descent have just become stateless because of the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal’s decision.
"ôtênaw" is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.
Waking up after thousands of years of being encased in ice, the voice of a creature is heard, emerging to find that the world is a much different place, although some things remain the same, he is hungry, and he is still an Apex predator, at the top of the food chain. The soundtrack is composed of samples of audio from the largest mass calving event in recorded history (when arctic ice melts and collapses into the ocean). There's a new monster in town.
One Story was originally produced as part of the Community Play “Travois” in 1994. It is a look into the various complicated and overlapping stories that inform the current urban and traditional culture of the First Nations peoples. The questionable politics that dictate Status and the paternalism of Treaty Days are juxtaposed with the pow wow, the voice of graffiti and the street.
Animal, fish and bird pictographs struggle to escape the filmic and musical presence of environmental poisons. Primarily an environmental picture, “Leaving the Poisons Behind” can also be seen as a forum for meditation on the idea of leaving behind personal poisons - smoking, drugs, drinking, abusive relationships, and so on.
Sunburst is the space between thoughts when consciousness slides easily into a liminal horizon. Washes of layers remember to breathe and remind the breath to let go, to follow the flow, then let go again.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
Brief Encounters & Sustained Engagement is part of the AVATAR series exploring methods of creating, validating and disseminating one’s identity through the use of technology and the Internet. The series is inspired by the mantra “I post therefore I am”, whereby Internet users legitimize their existence by documenting their lives and uploading this media to personal webpages and blogs. The work in this series facilitates an inquiry into our desire to share and publicize our lives.
This work is a fantasy of freedom, in which a stroll in the park gives rise to an opening up of unstable sexual codes, shifting identities and the empowering game of come and go.
An intimate look at Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe’ s work, and more specifically Materia Prima, a project for the abandoned garden of an historical landmark in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
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.
Une trentaine d’enfants en difficulté provenant d’un milieu défavorisé de Montréal sont soumis à des questions philosophiques.
Ahoy, Boy
Zuma explores the social construction of shadow mothers.
What exactly is a sissy? Sissy explores masculinity, gender identity, misogyny and self-acceptance.
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!