We're sorry, but our site requires Javascript to be enabled. If you would like instructions on how to enable Javascript, please click here.
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.
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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
"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 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.
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: CENSORSHIP dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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 digitally animated version of Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #349, which was commissioned by Toronto's Mercer Union gallery in 1981. Recreating LeWitt's geometric vocabulary and primary colour palette, 349 careens through emblazoned emblems, lifted from walls and transported into dialogue with LeWitt's exploration of spatial systems and human emotion.” - Andréa Picard, Toronto International Film Festival
Exilic Trilogy consists of three half-hour docudrama films by Arsalan Baraheni.
The camera mounted on a dolly moves through Mater, an installation of mother and child figures by Elvira Finnigan.
A magical and nostalgic universe is revealed, where memories oscillate between reality and imaginary.
A boreal forest, in the fall. A man wearing a face mask is on the watch. Camouflaged in the bush, he holds his gun at the ready. Is he a serial killer or just a trophy hunter? He’s neither. He’s an artist waiting for an animal and that elusive moment when the image for a work will come to him.
Thinking of home? In this installation/performance, Poruchnyk builds an outdoor set of a metal airplane hull and seating. This bilingual piece investigates communication, work and the motions of work as a dance.
Comprising five hundred images McFadden assembled to investigate the nature of homosocial and queer male relationships, A Separate Peace includes the reading of an eponymous essay the artist wrote in response to this collection and the end of his longterm relationship.
A woman creates a runway to fly up into the "clear blue" above an endless landscape.
Picariello and Lassandro investigates the real-life story of Filumena “Florence” Lassandro and Emilio Picariello, Italian immigrants who were convicted and hanged in 1923 for the murder of an Alberta Provincial Police officer.
This film is available in French only.
Short experimental cameraless animation.
BGCP I and BGCP II works, are created as a video diptych. Each is a performance for the camera where the grotesque character that is a double of a Pinocchio doll. The Pinocchio doll is assembled and disassembled in a futile and absurd labor.
An incident at the fridge. Some floozy, a gal in waiting, a gal in a camisole, a guy in a dress, a gal in a kilt, and a gal in charge.
This 25-minute documentary offers a look into the lives of four people, born female, who believe they are neither men nor women. They tell their stories about “coming out”, the challenges of being trans in everyday life and their thoughts on a world divided into two genders
Playing with sexuality and erotic imagery, this short looks at taboos and different ideas of what’s hot.
A queer couple documents their journey to become pregnant.
When our intrepid heroine Darcy gets her heart broken on her 30th birthday, her friends rally around to help her recover.
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?
Originally a multichannel video installation at the Royal Ontario Museum, Archaeology and You contemplates fallen empires, language and the motivating power of fear.
Shot at the House of Venus' fifth annual wig-fest "Wiggle," Show folk captures the wild essence of a live Venus extravaganza.
Bill Pusztai is a photographer who does portraiture and plants.
A deathbed tale. A skeptical daughter. A genealogical goose chase to the remote Icelandic highland.
David Roche looks out from the screen and starts to talk about love as he rises in the freight elevator to his lofty abode.
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.
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
Whitewash examines slavery in Canada and its omission from the national narrative. The country prides itself as being the benevolent refuge where enslaved Africans who were brought to United States gained their freedom via the Underground Railroad. That powerful image overshadows the fact that slavery was legal in Canada for over 200 years under both French and British rule.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
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?
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.
Treaty X features an audio track and a layering of composited video footage with themes of connection/disconnection to land and waters, treaty rights, and the way capitalism monetizes nature. The Treaty #3 territory comprises 55,000 hectares of land, and annuity payments of $5 have never been adjusted for inflation.
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
Founder: Noun- a person who establishes an institution or settlement. Verb- (of a ship) fill with water and sink. (of a plan or undertaking) fail or break down.
A split-screen video of the Trans-Canada Highway and the single Access Road on our Reserve, the Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation / Nezaatiikang, located north-west of Thunder Bay. Before the completion of the Access road in the late 2000's, the Reserve was only accessible by water. The roads work as metaphor of Colonization by revealing disparity between Canada and Indigenous Nations.
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.