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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.
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.
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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
"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.
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 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 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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
God's Eyes presents a situation in which a group of untrained actors are given open-ended tasks.
In this looped video, women in a quilting-bee configuration weave delicate replicas of spider webs.
A series of tableaux vivants revisit the paths that have been traced by a diagnosis.
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.
YNMD is a found footage film made using archival 16mm prints spliced together on a Steenbeck flatbed editor. Inspired by the DADA poems of Hugo Ball.
The fear of bridges.
A stain mysteriously appears on a woman’s clothes. Is it real? Is it dangerous? Where did it come from, and above all, how to get it out? Who is responsible for the anger that remains after an everyday sexual assault?
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
A percussionist gets the chance to lead a renowned orchestra in a world premiere performance.
A masked crochetist shows us his sudden immersion into crochet art.
"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.
Madeleine, caught between a painful past and an uncertain future, must come to terms with the loss of her lover, Claire. Making her way through Paris, Madeleine follows Aubrie, a beautiful and elusive woman who happens to work at the café below Madeleine's apartment. - Inside Out LGBT Film & Video Festival
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.
This black and white short salutes the women who helped define the concepts of glamour.
This work is a fantasy of freedom, in which a stroll in the park gives rise to an opening up of unstable sexual codes, shifting identities and the empowering game of come and go.
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
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.
Eddy, a psychic, nervous, little satyr and part-time on-line sex worker, makes crafts with viewers as he speaks about the pain of witnessing sexual violence.
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.
Let the House of Venus take you on a freaky ride in a funhouse of the bizarre and horrific.
A short experimental film about the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The film centres on a fictional group of gay men who frequent a Chinese bathhouse, which happens to be strike headquarters. This specific site, where men from all walks of life meet for anonymous sex, becomes the point of convergence for the bloody riots. The film culminates in a reinvented ending of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
At times painful and disturbing, Still Sane's overriding theme is ultimately one of defiance and survival: we can maintain our choices, even in the face of literally mind-numbing oppression.
An Ojibwe boy falls in love with Grandfather Sun, and recites an Anishinaabe language morning prayer with a few slight alterations. Thank you Grandfather. Miigwetch Nshoomis. I love the feel of your light on my skin. Gotta love that Vitamin D. The language used in this piece is Anishinaabe/Ojibwe.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
A short video featuring composited imagery with themes of the transitory nature of moments in time, the ephemeral passing of everyday mundane experiences, and dealing with loss.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
Exploring the legacy of the Indian Residential School system by looking at its history, present conditions and hopes for the future.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
“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.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
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.
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.