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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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
A lively look at the lives and musical roots of Aboriginal women from across North America.
Recording artist Troy Jackson calls for sassy, irreverent voices to join a chorus of queers, who demand justice and equality for all.
Artist Talk with Nelson Wu
Inheriting her father’s studio, Jennifer Alleyn finds herself drawn to the intimate space, still exuding the artist’s imagination.
A fast-paced edit of diverse images, a rich mosaic of surface textures, architecture, peacocks and swans, faces and bodies...
Melvin, an idea living in a mediocre brain plans an escape in order to be realized.
A series of tableaux vivants revisit the paths that have been traced by a diagnosis.
This high-speed ride down mountain roads near volcanic Gunung Salak in West Java is a final fling by an aging motorcycle road racer.
An Artist randomly generates animated drawings that come to life before his eyes.
The real encloses the remembered. A poetic look at the distorting / defining effect of memory.
A charming portrait of Ken D'Cruz, a baby photographer who dreams of acting.
A displaced young girl, her overwhelmed older sister and the superhero that brings them together.
Shot at the House of Venus' fifth annual wig-fest "Wiggle," Show folk captures the wild essence of a live Venus extravaganza.
A privileged look at the beginning of a relationship, capturing the moment the moon rose in their eyes.
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
An Asian Canadian man comes home with a new boyfriend for Christmas to find his younger brother, who is also gay, resentful for being left to care for their aging parents
Do you like your body?
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.
In 2014 Lydia’s son, Colten Pratt, went missing off the streets of Winnipeg.
Cupid gets beaten at his own game.
In a relationship, two women decide that the white partner will carry her partner’s Indigenous child.
A grieving woman who spends too much time in her car starts to think that it might be haunted.
Vi-a lesbian and artist-is heartbroken after her lover, Charlie, leaves her. She spends her days and sleepless nights in Charlie's pyjamas, alternately painting her “inner storm cloud” and abstract images of vaginas. These are strewn about her home amid other signs of her unraveling life.
That formidable force of conservation officials, Lesbian National Parks and Services, presents three portraits of lesbian species in crisis. Not unlike the renowned 1970s Hinterlands Who's-Who series, these public service announcements point to the perils of habitat loss and poaching. The Marxist Feminist, the Lesbian Separatist and the Bull-Dykus Americanus are featured in this parody of nature education.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
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.
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.
This work deals with the idea of sacred and profane and the Catholicism as an instrument of colonization.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
September 2013. The Court ruling is reached. Almost a quarter million Dominicans of Haitian descent have just become stateless because of the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal’s decision.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
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.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
A spoken word poem and minimalist audio track about a sexy highland stream, a love letter to the beauty found in nature, and the mysterious way beauty is suffused in the natural world, written in English and Anishinaabemowin.
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.