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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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
HOOLBOOM is a film that Arts Toronto commissioned local filmmaker Wrik Mead to make based on his impressions of fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom.
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.
In all interactive work you have to give over.
A short documentary about Canadian media artist Norman White.
Follow Jackie through the 1960s Toronto Yonge Street music scene, the tabloid rumours and scandals, to the mysterious disappearance. What ever happened to Jackie Shane? You have to watch to find out.
"Experiment # 1" was a test on the vitality of silver halide crystals on film emulsion.
Super 8 images of places and of people gazing into the camera.
Artist Portrait of 2015 Governor General Award recipient, Reva Stone.
An endearing portrait of a South Asian father as he attempts to give life and marital advice to his bodybuilding and image-obsessed son. This deeply touching, comedic short film is an autobiographical piece that stars the director’s own father.
After 15 years of living in Montréal, Hind returns to Morocco, her country of origin.
An overexposed hi-con roll affords an opportunity for the development of internal vision.
Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Stop-motion animation is used to manipulate a penis whose desire becomes its own demise.
Can’t Help Falling in Love with You follows Laura Ohio documenting Los Angeles through the dual lens of artist and sex worker. The film reveals the production of emotional experiences and the radical intimacy in which “artists and prostitutes are compelled to connect with complete strangers: a public. They share themselves with everyone but no one in particular” (Baudelaire).
A diasporic reverie on what life would be like if the filmmaker's family never immigrated.
Oh Canada - Oh Covid documents the opening days of the coronavirus pandemic in Ottawa, Ontario Canada.
A devil makes a violent attempt to change himself into a heavenly creature.
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
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
GUISE is an adult fairy tale for the 90s. Arising from the earth, a body discovers its nakedness. A suit of armour becomes a metaphor for the trappings of identity. Pixilated to produce the effect of a human marionette, accompanied by a good-natured verse. “guise” is by turns dark and humorous.
Kyle struggles to hold onto his ailing relationship with David who suffers from Alzheimer's.
This video work is an experiment in self-love. BDSM and sex as a solo venture towards healing, growth, and transformation. Facing insecurity, welcoming loneliness, building strength to continue on living and loving myself.
A woman, a transgender man, and their cat travel towards a mysterious roadside attraction known as "The Thing.”
Jill Johnston is the author of “Marmalade Me,” “Gullible’s Travels,” “Lesbian Nation’,” and “Motherbound.” This cinema verité documentary is a portrait of Johnston at work and a feminist author at a transitional point in the women’s movement and in her own career.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
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.
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.
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 place called home, a North End poem.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
A group of Vietnamese nationals is making their way to an unknown location in a shipping container to find a better life.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
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.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
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.