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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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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.
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: PORN Dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
"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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
A young man pursues the apparition of a loved one who disappeared one turbulent night.
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!
When both her grandmothers are diagnosed with the early onset of dementia, filmmaker A. Megan Turnbull feels a strong compulsion to return to Winnipeg and make a film about them.
In the stories of adoption, the mothers who gave birth were invisible. Exiled Mothers takes us on the artist Sharon Alward’s journey to recover her own repressed, secret, shaming memories from relinquishing her daughter in 1971.
"The Way We Are" shares excerpts of stories from audio interviews with 4 queer Asian women living in Toronto: Katherine Chun, Wenda Li, Tamai Kobayashi, and Nancy Seto. Told in the present-tense, these stories are arranged in a way that explores the past as the present, and in doing so, immersing viewers into the real-lived experiences from a different generation.
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?
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.
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?
Out on the open prairie, how could you possibly feel hemmed in? Through the dialogue between a bird and a woman, the story of a woman’s situation and love relationship unfolds. As it does, so does the issue gossip as a tool of conformity to a community’s morals, expectations and the idea that truth is a very delicate and disposable item. This is all approached with a good sense of humour - the lighter something tastes, the more of it you can eat.
Barbara James is a thirty-something, single, hip and opinionated pregnant Black woman. Her life takes an eventful twist of fate when, one particularly ordinary day, she wakes up and realizes that her unborn baby has stopped moving
A hard-hitting work that, to paraphrase Jean Genet, gives a voice to the unexpressed.
Dedicated to the artist’s father, this experimental tape begins sorting through identities contaminated by the generalized racism of white society and its degrading commercial exploitation of Native culture, i.e., “Indian” drums and doll souvenirs. Five young natives search for reconnection to their families, their stories, traditions and their role within community.
An endearing portrait of a South Asian father as he attempts to give life and marital advice to his bodybuilding and image-obsessed son. This deeply touching, comedic short film is an autobiographical piece that stars the director’s own father.
An ode to my daily environment.
Short experimental, found footage film.
Dude? Dude.
Check out granny's bingo card collection and more on everybody's favourite morning show, coming to you from Darryl's basement and over your local cable television network.
In 2014 Lydia’s son, Colten Pratt, went missing off the streets of Winnipeg.
WÎSKACÂN is an experimental contemporary dance film utilizing Bunraku-style tabletop puppetry and object performance. Video, Puppet Design, Performance, and Music by Tyson Houseman. This project was made as part of Canada Council for the Arts Digital Originals initiative, and I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Home deals with the conflicting worlds of Aboriginal people, the view of the urban Aboriginal and the view of the rural Aboriginal.
A Johannesburg neighourhood unites five people’s ambitions, desires, and struggles to survive over the course of a Friday.
Two ersatz “Indian warriors” chase a beautiful Indian maiden through the streets of Winnipeg but she loves Chief Big Bear. Who is the hunter, and who the hunted in this tableaux?
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.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
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.
"The Law Is in the Seed" is a video of a poem by the same name written by Alex Jacobs, a Mohawk Indian poet from Akwesasne (New York State).
New Rooms was made from a sequence of photos that I found in online image archives like the New York City Library's Picture Collection. The photos that contained people were transformed into written descriptions. As a result, the presence of those people must be imagined.
"This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Pour la réalisation de ce documentaire animé, les enfants du centre d'Assistance d'enfants en difficulté ont interviewé des personnes âgées en institution...
A young Aboriginal girl's hopes and dreams are re-negotiated within the walls and tunnels of the institution of education.
Told through the perspective of a landscape, “Just Passing Through” tells the story of evolution as one image gives rise to the next. The film explores the relationship between permanence and impermanence where familiar subjects are fleeting and we are left to contemplate unfamiliar landscapes.
On a cold fall evening, Leila is left alone to tend the family convenience store. A series of strange clients keep her in a constant state of apprehension. Language and cultural barriers also contribute to the making of a nerve-racking evening.
A displaced young girl, her overwhelmed older sister and the superhero that brings them together.
Against a narrative composed half of laundry tips and half of the creation story of Genesis chapter 1, white and black clouds of socks drift by.
This performance video captures how the artist feels about their initial identity that was lost and their current identity, which is confusing. The video shows pain, burden, and a strong desire to be free from all the expectations carried.
A day in the life of a boy unlike the others.
An examination of how art and truth come into conflict at the trial of a young man accused of rape.
Happy is she who always has before her eyes the time of her death and who is prepared every day to die.
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.