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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.
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.
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.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
"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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)....
“diver geyser” forms associations between a natural water spring (a geyser) and a diver (diving from a spring board.) This video is a flash animation using royalty-free footage. The separate animations are edited together to create a new meaning.
This film is available in French only.
A moon-like ball of dough is rolled out. Abbreviations of the months of the year appear on the dough, and are cut apart.
A street flyer leads to a surprising discovery.
Shot in one take, two teen girls interact with a life-size bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi in shadow of the under-construction, controversial Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, Canada.
Time is measured in increments of what falls on the kitchen floor.
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
Falling Into Chaos is a world where the seminal space between beauty and glitch-chaos combine into a soothing balance.
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.
A girl with the power to heal conducts a ceremony that attracts a shapeshifter.
Perspectives on Western Canadian Métis culture.
Two imperfect women share one perfect body.
Trade is an experimental video short exploring concepts of borders and trade, and their relationship to notions of collective history and national identity in the North American colonial context.
A journalist gets more than bargained for while interviewing a strange local on recent disappearances.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
Video collage, documenting a week spent in Chicago.
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?
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
For over sixty years, loving grandmother Cecile St. Amant has been keeping a deep secret - she is Métis.
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.
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.
Everyone sees. No one tells.
An Inuit woman becomes the first person to ever be featured in a choreographed snowshoe dance video.
Captured over five years in 18 communities, INDIAN TIME paints a personal, up-to-date portrait of 11 of Quebec's Indigenous peoples. With some forty people speaking in turn, INDIAN TIME makes for exceptional encounters and immerses viewers in "Indian time" with their eyes and hearts.
Inheriting her father’s studio, Jennifer Alleyn finds herself drawn to the intimate space, still exuding the artist’s imagination.
A year of pictures mash into an intense viewing experience.
A young boy must face a future without his father.
What do we bring with us from our homeland that remains in our possession? What do we discard? What do we pass on? Language, memories, objects that bear witness to past lives and often, to other cultures...
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.
The eponymous narrator (a ghost in the form of a coconut) resists a singular place and time, moving freely, if not lightly, through personal photographs, contemporary commentary and archival material.
This is a film that touches on my thoughts about growing up. I wanted to use things that I think we're appealing to my eye.
Nine women from Montreal reveal themselves to the camera. They are lesbian, bisexual and two-spirited. They come from Malaysia, Tunisia, Lebanon, Guinea and Ghana. Some are First Nations women. They reveal their sometimes painful, sometimes effortless passages leading to the acceptance of their sexual orientations...
This playful, animated documentary portrays the charming, yodeling farmer with humour and wit and “looks the way yodeling sounds.”
Irina, a child of long distances and virtual spaces, tries to understand what it means to lose family.
Entrainment ritual to assemble from missing parts, 2017, documents an installation experiment in my studio. This layered assemblage of domestic and landscape imagery and sound tethers my present environs with some half-fictional, nostalgic place.
Don’t Blink For 45 Seconds (After Kathy Dillon) is a 45 second performative video work addressing the thresholds and limitations of the body in relation to control.
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.