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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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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.
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.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
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.
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
Inspiration for this video came from Winona's dogs Kai and Tojo, their playful attitudes and the joy they bring to her life.
"Six" recreates dramatic shots and actions from six classic and “B” movies recreated, acted and produced in a 3 foot by 3 foot closet by the artist. Six replaces the movie industry’s elaborate sense of artifice with a concentration on the emotional drives behind each scene. The characters portrayed all display dual and split personalities. What a feat of double displacement for the actress whose work already requires identifying with and consuming a constantly shifting series of subjects.
In “Workin' on Grandma,” the 5th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, burnt memories and “deviled pussy holes” string themselves along the faded lines of CHRISTEENE's family tree, all tucked in tight under a blanket of Korean karaoke dreams.
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.
Snow Search finds four performers searching for each other, each carrying one quarter of a photographic portrait of Michael Snow. A lyrical exploration through the city and an homage to Michael Snow.
In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury.
"gay shame '98" is a lo-fi document of an event of the same name that took place at dumba, a queer collectively run arts space in Brooklyn.
This animation uses watercolor paintings of child-morphed creatures, poppies and dismembered legs, based on collaged photos from my animation ‘Nothing ever happened’, to produce a commentary on loss.
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.
A diasporic reverie on what life would be like if the filmmaker's family never immigrated.
Eddie is a hormonal 14-year-old boy living alone with his mother in the suburbs. One day after school, he accidentally spies on his attractive older neighbor, Chad, as he steps out of the shower and measures himself with a red comb. Not long afterward, Eddie is the victim of a verbal slur by Chad's friend Tim. This inspires Eddie to enact some creative retaliation. Winner of the Audience Award at the MiMi LGBT Short Film Festival 2012.
Pixel Pose depicts a lesbian’s life in three stages: the single lesbian, the lesbian couple and lesbian family. This movement based video uses queer text and carnal poses to explore issues of lesbian intimacy and representation.
"This film is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Un jeune homme rend visite à sa mère pour lui présenter sa femme.
A hard-hitting work that, to paraphrase Jean Genet, gives a voice to the unexpressed.
A multilayered video installation by Emilio Rojas critiques the construct of the stereotypical Canadian male
A grieving woman who spends too much time in her car starts to think that it might be haunted.
This animation utilizes over 500 photos taken in India of communication towers.
Inkster’s beautiful fiction references the destruction of Africville on the outskirts of Halifax in 1969. Four characters speak directly to the came ra about their lives and sexuality. This use of direct address says docu mentary, but the actors speak Inkster’s bittersweet words.
In "Bustin' Brown,” the fourth installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, CHRISTEENE confronts the ever-present bastardization of anal sex from mainstream bourgeois heterosexuals by returning "da buh-hole" to its rightful owners.
Playing with sexuality and erotic imagery, this short looks at taboos and different ideas of what’s hot.
Do you like your body?
Adapted from a short story of the same name by Canadian author Andrew Pyper, “Breaking and Entering” is a poetic parable of a young man coming to terms with the death of his father. The film was near completion at the time of Hull's death and was subsequently finished by The Estate of Andrew Hull.
A place called home, a North End poem.
“The Script” presents a collage of revealing moments pulled from material in the Prelinger Archives, an online collection of over 11,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial and amateur) films made between the 1910s – 1980s.
There are many memories of childhood that have slipped through the cracks. Most that I can recollect were of the differences in myself in comparison to the others around. Taken away at one week of age from my Indian community and given to a white foster family, my experience of the authentic Indian and where my placement is, within this dream of authenticity, comes from an infected locale.
A group of Vietnamese nationals is making their way to an unknown location in a shipping container to find a better life.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
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.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
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.
"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.
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.