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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.
VUCAVU.education is a streaming platform that gives educators and students access to a curated selection of independent Canadian film and video art spanning more than 50 years. The shared catalogue includes documentary, fiction, experimental, and animation titles from artists across Canada, offering many unique views into the country’s cultural landscape.
VUCAVU.education is an initiative of the VUCAVU.com platform.
The VUCAVU team, in consultation with our content partners, have made the decision to slowly shut down our view-on-demand (VOD) services on our platform to make way for a new direction in our operations. VOD changes will occur on VUCAVU over the coming months. As we make changes to the platform with our developers, we will periodically update this page and share news in our regular communications.
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.
Follow along with Spirit Bear as he realizes the importance of learning history to make better decisions now and for future generations of kids and cubs.
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 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.
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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
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.
La petite histoire de Vidéo Femmes en images, textes, extraits vidéos, archives inédites...
VUCAVU Showreel
Shot on Bolex, and hand-processed, the short film documents the steps of creating an oil painting. Narrated by rural Manitoba artist Vivian Paschke.
Voyeuristic camera angles and re-processed footage are used to explore the spaces between sleeping and waking states, revealing the omnipresent erotic.
The artist organizes the tension between video-painting-body, by displacing the traditional pictorial support (the canvas) to the body as the zone of intervention. The body is naked, the body is painted.
Temporary Tattoos applied to 35mm for eternity. An energetic conjuring of Manitoban spirits. Starring: Haunted HyperActive Hypnotists and Breakneck Butterfly Barfbags.
In this film, Renate Gravert-Martins’s photography and life is told through her work and 16mm reinterpretations of her images.
For Ed, like Sisyphus of Greek Mythology, it’s the struggle itself that fills his heart. Special Ed inspires and provokes us to think about the spark that keeps us going through the good times and the bad.
Pierre is a Montreal born belly dancer of Syrian origin. Belly dance is an art that is mainly performed by women, but men also have a role in the history of this dance. This short documentary presents Pierre’s story as well as...
Queer poetry in French and Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) in an emblematic and luminous place in Quebec City.
A loving portrait of Winnipeg's crown jewel: Portage Place Mall.
Starving for companionship, Quinn pursues an unorthodox approach to resolving her intense loneliness.
Dawn tells the story of two strangers who have more in common than they first realize. After Tye detects what he considers a racist glance from another passenger on the evening train home, a confrontation ensues. Tye is shocked to discover that they share something big, and both men are forced to face their prejudices in ways they never expected.
Eddy, a psychic, nervous, little satyr and part-time on-line sex worker, makes crafts with viewers as he speaks about the pain of witnessing sexual violence.
HOMEBELLY combines waking dreams with unsettling fragments of this and that. An icy soundscape is set to a live-action animated drama featuring a sleeping body and a persistant rock.
A personal film about Canada's extraction industry and its detrimental effects on the land and Indigenous peoples.
Two male blow-up dolls become puppets in this short. Not only is one of the men out of air, but both of them are tragically out of synch with one another.
A hand-processed diary film about memory, family and loss told through snapshots and landscapes in and around Ontario. Music by Sam Phillips. Screenings include: 2008 Berlin International Film Festival (in Forum Expanded section), 2008 Rotterdam International Film Festival. "nostagia isn't what it used to be, i can only picture the disappearing world when you touch me"
With equal rights in Canada, including same-sex marriage, this video asks, do we still need a queer neighbourhood or queer spaces?
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
EXPOSURE is an experimental documentary that explores issues of race, sexuality and cultural identity. A dialogue between two lesbians of colour (Japanese-Canadian and Afro-Caribbean women) is intercut with photographs, texts, paintings and voice-over.
Short, Castle and Nehls carefully craft floating hands in space with their laptop computer creating surprising pleasurable effects with their mere hand movements
At long last, everything you’ve always wanted to know about down there, but were afraid to ask. A groovy guide to feminine hygiene wherein our heroine, Ms V., struts her stuff about town in the funkiest anatomical tour ever. She raps! She dances! She’s big! "We’re Talking Vulva" is a wear and care manual with kick- it’s a rock video.
This 16mm B&W cut-out animation borrows narrative tropes from early Atari video games, silent films, and anime cartoons, offering a weird story and hybrid aesthetic.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
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.
This work deals with the idea of sacred and profane and the Catholicism as an instrument of colonization.
Gaawiin Gego [Got No Nothing] is based on a rhyme in Ojibwe that my great aunt taught me, the lyrics reference the blues and a Nina Simone song. The audio track is layered over top of found video footage from Lac Des Mille Lacs, which is the lake beside our Reserve
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
This video interrogates how subjectivities, political stances, and modes of social engagement formed elsewhere contribute to our positioning within the local, cultural landscape of Vancouver.
Since the launch of the VUCAVU platform, we've collaborated with hundreds of artists, arts organizations and educators from across Canada to present bilingual curated and educational programming online. Artists always receive royalties and screening fees from these programs and they often include additional educational resources such as recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks. After the paid or free programming period expires, available artworks can be rented individually.
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.
Discover our new VUCAVU.education postcards designed by Emil Woudenberg from Strike Design Studio, featuring a still from Caroline Blais’ film “Étoiles” (available for VOD on VUCAVU!). We’re pleased to pay Caroline for using their image and are dedicated to building VUCAVU in community with artists.