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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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: CENSORSHIP dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
Is Ohio the fish or the phisher? The film’s sexual metaphor extends to artists, who use their own experiences as material for their work, becoming both fish and fisher, harvester and harvested. Ohio’s deeply personal documentary footage and audio recordings serve as the raw material for her exploration of class, art, and the performance of heterosexuality.
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!
Picariello and Lassandro investigates the real-life story of Filumena “Florence” Lassandro and Emilio Picariello, Italian immigrants who were convicted and hanged in 1923 for the murder of an Alberta Provincial Police officer.
During the Arab revolution, a love story between two women – a Canadian and a Syrian American – turns into an international socio-political thriller spotlighting media excesses and the thin line between truth and falsehood on the Internet.
The meeting of the Blue and White Nile in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, is referred to as 'the longest kiss in history'.
Gay dating in a nutshell.
Disoriented and alone, a man wakes to find himself in a place long-abandoned. With only vague memories of his surroundings, the man relies on his instincts to discover his purpose and survive the crippling isolation.
No two adoptees are alike. Harold & Peter, Lynne & Lynn, Maureen & Stephen and Dana candidly share their stories and reveal how being adopted shapes an individual’s identity right into adulthood.
Six teenagers go through their first emotional flutters. Boy-girl relationships, friendship, first love butterflies in the stomach, body changes, sexuality… Why is everything so complicated?
Métis Femme Bodies returns the narratives to those who have had their voices muted and cultures stolen from them.
This journey led to the creation of a 30 minute documentary film in which Henteleff presents a personal, point-of-view account of the Taharah beginning in the Jewish mortuary and ending at the moment of burial.
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.
A manuscript, written in 1954 to aid missionaries working among the Cree speaking natives of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, is the basis for this reflective narrative.
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.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
"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.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
A young mother looks to connect with her Aboriginal culture in order to teach her children.
A displaced young girl, her overwhelmed older sister and the superhero that brings them together.
"Those That Will Come, Will Hear" constructs a portrait of the erosion of languages; a global phenomenon that is still largely unexplored. This exploratory film will be a way to discover the essence of First Nations and Inuit languages still spoken in Quebec via the richness of their unique sounds and the rendering of this inherent musicality into visual imagery.
Found film from the future. The last human on Earth wonders "why make a film".
Invited to speak at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, the narrator describes an intimate encounter with an Evil Colonizing Queen which led to Turtle Island's contraction of an invasive European flora.
Dude? Dude.
Why would anyone want to go to the beach during the day?
Jeff is driving. Nydia is behind him. The motorcycle glides between cars and time is suspended. The trip ends and Nydia goes back to her monotonous routine. But everything is fine, Jeff will return.
A hand processed film exploring the aging modernist structures of a popular amusement park on the Toronto Islands.
Colette Balcaen’s artistic expression, transmitted through textiles, is informed by a passion for her language and culture.
"La vie en pellicule" is film about a promise I made my son at his birth. He was born at the end of the year 2006 when negatives of family snapshots and precious moments are rare. I promised him that he would grow up with negatives as records of our lives.
Step-printed images of a “home” - a suburban house, no people in sight - combine with a children's story, told in saccarine tones, about the country mouse who discovers that "there's no place like home." A gently told tale of alienation.
A reworking of images of Princess Diana drawn from a CNN tribute called “The People’s Princess.” The isolated and manipulated images point to England’s colonial past and to the elusiveness of a media image.
Wontons is a video that has dialogue centred on being mistaken for a different race. The non-translated dialogue, spoken in Cantonese, may be mysterious to viewers.
Some things are lost, some things are found.
"Exile To The Wild West" is a story of solitude and hope set in a frozen land.
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.
A visual delight, this film by one of Winnipeg's most talented photographers explores a field of sunflowers, examining details of the large beaming heads, waving leaves, and bowing stalks, all to the music of Bill Hinkley.