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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.
Fanny meets her high school friends for the annual Switch & Bitch Party.
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 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.
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.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
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)....
Watch in awe as Miss Edmonton Teenburger 1983 graces the screen in her first featurette, IT'S PARTY TIME! A story as layered as her hair, as ethereal as her style. A pop explosion of Ukranian delight that will leave you bedazzled. Are you ready?
Moving images are captured as a doctor goes about his day in a busy medical clinic entering five patients' rooms.
"Slapleather" is a buffet of bolo ties, loud topaz western wear and a whole lot of Achy Breakin’ Boot Scootin’ Boogyin’.
Transfer Point is a study of the movement of commuters in an urB.A.n transit system.
Cirkut/Canadettes reveals layers of a mysterious photograph that hung in a hallway for many years.
Imprint is rooted in personal and national narratives – stories of refuge sought in a country founded on a Colonial process itself saturated with the displacement. A winter storm insists its presence on an expansive flat plain where a figure performs a ritual in two parts.
A young woman arrives at a rural Ontario farmhouse looking for her genetics professor.
Your flesh is porous. If you are not vigilant something could slip through. It is important to check yourself over and then check again. This hand-painted animation will show you how.
Sisters of the Cross is a meditative video that proposes to unveil the hidden and profound lives of a disappearing order of nuns in Winnipeg, Brazil, Argentina, and France. This contemplative work is a meditation on the texture of slowness, the nature of listening, and the relationship between attention and time.
Based on a true story from Regina’s history, an argument over sheet music leads to a quarrel of sorts in Victoria Park.
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.
Taekwondo first emerged as a martial art in Korea in the 1950s. Today, it is taught worldwide as shown here in a elementary school gymnasium in Montreal.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
Hand-drawn illustrations animate this touching personal story about the "60’s Scoop” of Aboriginal children into the Canadian child-welfare system.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
A one take super 8 film, that explores the nature of the cowboys and Indian myth perpetuated by wide screen Hollywood movies.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
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.
An experimental documentary that abstracts the roads I travel on a daily basis.
Five lifelong friends. Four are fearful of their future. One must face the fact that she may not have one.
It’s the Lone Ranger Show!
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
Gerry Barret: The Original Aboriginal takes us from studio interview to the stage at Rumor’s Comedy Club and the Cat Sass Tavern. Gerry’s repertoire includes topics like: what should an Indian D.J. sound like on the radio?... A day in the life of Canada’s first native prime minister... a ballad to Elijah Harper and much more, including a stop at a movie shoot.
Cuthand uses a latent gas mask fetish as a jumping off point for looking at their role as a participant in the Whitney Biennial during a contentious year for the museum which had a war profiteer on the board.
Rachki is an experimental video short looking at memory, migration, translation, and loss.
From the heart of the planet’s slums and squats, individuals have taken over these marginalized worlds and erected cities in their own image.
In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury.
A process-based, experimental film about loss, and the parallel between memory and the physical self: how it evolves, degrades and disintegrates.
A dreamily crafted short about a second-generation immigrant who contemplates his unfamiliarity with his South Asian heritage and his disconnection with his parent’s experience while he empties the family home.
"You're just a woman.... smile and relax."
A gender-bending heavy metal carnival ride.
Métis Femme Bodies returns the narratives to those who have had their voices muted and cultures stolen from them.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
A parody of the art film where sentimentality and self-consciousness are brought to an absurd level.
While posing for caricatures, strangers reveal themselves by sharing their diverse personal stories in rapid succession. This work explores the complexity of intimacy, identity and representation.
Covered, remixed, and sampled by hundreds of artists and fans alike, Creep by Radiohead is an epic 90s anthem of nihilism and self-loathing.
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.