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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.
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.
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.
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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
Can’t Help Falling in Love with You follows Laura Ohio documenting Los Angeles through the dual lens of artist and sex worker. The film reveals the production of emotional experiences and the radical intimacy in which “artists and prostitutes are compelled to connect with complete strangers: a public. They share themselves with everyone but no one in particular” (Baudelaire).
A 21st century update of Marcel Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2"
Victoria, a young actress full of dreams, carefully prepares for an audition. She's to play a character with no name: Whore No. 2. However, the casting director turns her expectations sideways.
"I watched a movie one afternoon and this is the story of that movie." A fictional story is combined with my personal archives of photos.
He’s a priest, he doesn’t say Mass and yet, every Sunday he assembles the same group of people at St. Gemma’s Church.
Shot on Bolex, and hand-processed, the short film documents the steps of creating an oil painting. Narrated by rural Manitoba artist Vivian Paschke.
They Met In A Garden is an exploration and analysis of the archetypal romantic love story.
Les Fermières Obsédées give themselves over body and soul to this viva voce dissertation that expresses their aims as it points up the power struggles underpinning current political and economic issues.
A fun and imaginative stop-motion animation that examines the allure and consequences of stationery supplies.
A magical and nostalgic universe is revealed, where memories oscillate between reality and imaginary.
L’œil du spectateur s’arrête sur l’image d’une femme, entraperçue entre des rideaux noirs translucides.
David Roche looks out from the screen and starts to talk about love as he rises in the freight elevator to his lofty abode.
Jill Johnston is the author of “Marmalade Me,” “Gullible’s Travels,” “Lesbian Nation’,” and “Motherbound.” This cinema verité documentary is a portrait of Johnston at work and a feminist author at a transitional point in the women’s movement and in her own career.
Set in a bar in 1960, two women share a look that launches a fantasy encounter. An homage to the women who had the courage to explore their sexuality in the mid 20th century, and a lament for those who could not. Set to the song, “Oh Regret” by singer/songwriter Mary Lorson.
Two imperfect women share one perfect body.
A deathbed tale. A skeptical daughter. A genealogical goose chase to the remote Icelandic highland.
In “Leftovers,” Janine Fung's wild narration about misunderstandings in her traditional Chinese family plays over images of her mother carving turkey.
The Summer of Thought was unleashed upon the citizens of Winnipeg in 2007. For three months, Consideration Liberation Army agitated for unbridled thought and thoughtfulness.
Aliens have landed. Colonization? Again?!
A could've-been love story.
TWO/DOH is an evocative poetic pastiche exploring the public and private spaces of desire, and its intersection with the cultural and erotic connections between two women of different origins: Persian/Armenian and South Asian/Sri Lankan.
"The Magus" is a multi-format, process-based experimental film that explores the root of artistic creation.
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.
Using the metaphor of suburban architecture, "Homogeneity" archly critiques the desire for conformity within the/our queer community.
She Draws a Circle reflects on the work of generations of women to interrupt cycles of violence and oppression, looking to the ways in which our spiritual connections to the land and one another help us to hold space for regenerative healing, bringing the hidden to light drawing on that light to encircle each successive generation.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
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?
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one's outwardly appearance.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
This film is available in French only.
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
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.
A place called home, a North End poem.
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.
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.