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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.
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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
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.
A portrait of bombastic film producer Greg Klymkiw, who was a major player in the DIY Winnipeg film scene of the 1980s and was instrumental in launching Guy Maddin's career.
For almost 40 years, Colette Whiten has quietly and powerfully challenged gender dynamics, political power and mass media imagery... This video portrait was commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts and the IMAA.
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.
They Met In A Garden is an exploration and analysis of the archetypal romantic love story.
Dedicated to the artist’s father, this experimental tape begins sorting through identities contaminated by the generalized racism of white society and its degrading commercial exploitation of Native culture, i.e., “Indian” drums and doll souvenirs. Five young natives search for reconnection to their families, their stories, traditions and their role within community.
An overexposed hi-con roll affords an opportunity for the development of internal vision.
A meditation experience to unlock and reconcile with one's past in an effort to imagine a future actualized self.
Stay Away is a video poem about the feeling of being apart.
A short documentary that details the creative and physical process of Winnipeg artist Kami Goertz.
St. John the Baptist, Performance/ Installation with video- 4 monitors and video projection "One may not be capable of loving, except for loving someone who loves." –Baudrillard.
The past is a funny place.
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?
Constructed from Canadian prairie archival images taken between 1920 and 1940, this film lyrically explores a son/daughter's relationship with his/her father and the family's relationship to their land.
Spiritual sanctuary, sex, sisterhood and a gathering of faeries.
The Long Form Lesbian Census polls the Toronto lesbian community to find out important statistics.
An estranged couple meets one last time to decide the fate of their relationship. Featuring James Bunton, Regina the Gentlelady, Jeff Harris, Owen Pallett, Katie Ritchie and Judy Virago.
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.
Récit ironique d'un corps qui a perdu toute maîtrise sur son visage...
One of his first videos, Gonick”s Exit/Portal explores subcultural ritual and violence in a short video that references the work of fellow “Queerpunk” artists Pier Paulo Pasolini and Derek Jarman.
The “Manholes” series takes a pan of a single male figure and fragments it into a grid of peepholes. The microscopic mapping of the body is intimate yet clinical. The cascading body parts create a kaleidoscope of changing skin tones. It is difficult to find the point of origin on the subject’s body, though occasionally signifiers make it possible; an eye, a nipple or the toes suddenly orient the viewer.
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.
Pigeon Hole comically expresses the filmmaker’s desire to set fire to the restrictive and reductive labels gays use to categorize one another and themselves, especailly via modern methods of hooking up such as online websites and apps.
Utilizing human pixillation, Isabelle's demand to nurture conjures a variety of sensations... perverse, kitsch, sweet witch voodoo?
"ôtênaw" is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.
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.
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.
This work deals with the idea of sacred and profane and the Catholicism as an instrument of colonization.
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.
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 video interrogates how subjectivities, political stances, and modes of social engagement formed elsewhere contribute to our positioning within the local, cultural landscape of Vancouver.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
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.