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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
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.
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!
"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.
Commentaire corporel, visuel et sonore sur l’accélération du rythme de vie et sur notre devoir d’être sans cesse performants, actifs et productifs.
A meditation on (im)mortality, mediated by a lifetime of images
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.
"To mark the 100th anniversary of Norman McLaren’s birth I baked this film for him." - RDW
A constructed cinematic space where life and death exist.
The result of a collaboration between artists Nahed Mansour and Kandis Friesen, this work is based on the original footage from an unrealized documentary found at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Archives in Winnipeg Manitoba.
"Brain Static" takes the viewer into the mind of the filmmaker and his fear that one day he may face the same illness as his own mother.
Let the House of Venus take you on a freaky ride in a funhouse of the bizarre and horrific.
A middle-aged poet delivers his own sad "Howl".
A woman paints with her vagina to please the art hungry masses that crowd her gallery and her life.
"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.
A devil makes a violent attempt to change himself into a heavenly creature.
“Borders” is an intimate exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: top surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. “Borders” is available as a single-channel work or as an extended installation.
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
This black and white short salutes the women who helped define the concepts of glamour.
"This film is available in French only.Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Sur un toit, une photographe croque le paysage. Soudain, un homme entre dans le champs de la caméra et la dérange. Que se passe-t-il ensuite?
A diasporic reverie on what life would be like if the filmmaker's family never immigrated.
Exploring the concept of the common space all women share, “The Gaze,” questions notions of acceptable female behavior and appearance in the patriarchal society.
A grieving woman who spends too much time in her car starts to think that it might be haunted.
There are things in life you never forget. One of them, like it or not, is "The Talk".
Grand Mother Tongue pairs poetry, spoken in Plains Cree, and breath with the intimate imagery of strawberries being consumed bite-by-bite, and finger lick for finger lick.
"The Magus" is a multi-format, process-based experimental film that explores the root of artistic creation.
A hard-hitting work that, to paraphrase Jean Genet, gives a voice to the unexpressed.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
A deeply intimate look at the frightening realities of food insecurity in First Nations communities.
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 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.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
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
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
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?
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.
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.