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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.
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.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
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 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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
Venus is born again in the Canadian wilderness, as muse, artist, and catfish
This is a video about drawing. It gives view of processes, not of completed drawings.
This recording of a VUCAVU OUTREACH presentation from April 2020 is led by Jacquelyn Hébert, VUCAVU’s Community and Program Manager, and our co-presenters Samuel La France, Executive Director from the Images Festival and Morgan Sears-Williams, Member Services and Program Outreach Co‑ordinator for CFMDC. (VUCAVU OUTREACH presentation recording from April 18, 2020)
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.
Short experimental cameraless animation.
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.
Footage of the Hampton Court Palace maze, established in 1689 and perhaps the most famous existing maze in the world, is contrasted with Anishinabe petroforms found in Manitoba’s Whiteshell area. The English, mannered, controlled hedges are designed to limit sight; the rocks of the Canadian Shield, arranged in patterns of turtles, snakes and humans, were created to inspire teaching and healing. Finnigan interrogates the wisdom of the colonizing versus the colonized culture.
Why would anyone want to go to the beach during the day?
HOOLBOOM is a film that Arts Toronto commissioned local filmmaker Wrik Mead to make based on his impressions of fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom.
Art moves from innocence to complexity, back to innocence.
This video is a paradoxical exploration of the glacial environment during a walk, between purity and pollution.
A short documentary that details the creative and physical process of Winnipeg artist Kami Goertz.
Récit ironique d'un corps qui a perdu toute maîtrise sur son visage...
A five-foot, six-inch rappin’ vulva, in an unexpected parody of the music video genre, leads the viewer on a complete description of female genitalia.
Porn star, Ryan Russell is rotoscoped in this performance about ego and Eros. In the tradition of the peepshow a private sexual performance is made public. A lone figure enters the frame, smirks at the camera and gets down to business. Is he simply there to entertain himself or is this a performance for the viewer? It eventually goes terribly wrong when he quite literally drowns in his own ego.
A short film on the subject of Indigenous Love. What is (romantic) love? And what does it mean to you? 8 couples share their thoughts
Couplings presents images of 38 men and women both as individuals and in various configurations. It tweaks received values which may underlie assumptions and prejudices about what is and isn’t appropriate in intimate relationships.
"Bloodstorm" considers the paralells between the unpredictability of a storm and the turmoil of living with HIV/AIDS.
This short documentary-style interview film takes a quick look at some key terms that originated within queer Black and POC communities (such as the ballroom scene), tracing their cultural significance to contemporary mainstream popular culture.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
"Slumberparty 2018" is a remake of a 1984 Super 8 film called Slumberparty made by the Positive Pornographers, a mostly queer collective of Toronto-based artists, activists and sex-workers. Commissioned by A-Space Gallery's "Developing a Women's Erotic Language on Film" workshop, Slumberparty was made as a direct intervention in Toronto’s feminist porn debates.
Using the metaphor of suburban architecture, "Homogeneity" archly critiques the desire for conformity within the/our queer community.
'Undone' explores the troubled language of the tactile body.
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.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
Is the word “Indian” a label for Canadian Aboriginals to reject or reclaim?
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
This intricate stop-motion animation interlaces Canada’s colonial past with writer-director Amanda Strong’s personal family history — and illuminates Cree, Métis, and Anishinaabe reclamation of culture, language, and Nationhood. (Danis Goulet, TIFF)
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.
"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.
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.
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.