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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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Sydnie Baynes is a Toronto-based multimedia artist and animator currently studying at OCAD University. She holds a BFA in Film Animation and creates work that explores Black history, identity, and self-love through storytelling and digital media. Her artistic practice bridges the worlds of education and independent media, with a focus on accessibility, empowerment, and cultural preservation. Welcome to the team Sydnie!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
"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.
Artist talk with Basil AlZeri
Since launching our platform in 2017, VUCAVU has collaborated with several curators and arts organizations from across Canada to present film and media art programs. Each program includes a text exploring the themes addressed, and many also include recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks for you to discover!
Hand-processed Super8 film as a dialogue with your darkest self.
"Vessel for a lower Ocean" is a docu-poem which explores difficult questions around body memory and communication.
With lyrics by Nishnaabeg poet Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, How to Steal a Canoe tells the story of a young Nishnaabeg woman and an old Nishnaabeg man rescuing a canoe from a museum and returning it to the lake where it was meant to be.
Visitors to the Carnegie Library Pittsburgh expound on a myriad of thoughts and opinions, while a caricaturist listens on and captures their likeness.
While posing for caricatures, strangers reveal themselves by sharing their diverse personal stories in rapid succession. This work explores the complexity of intimacy, identity and representation.
A short documentary film that follows four young gay men as they discuss gay life and sexual health in Montreal.
"This film is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." In 1970, Hungarian-Québécois photographer Gabor Szilasi set out for the Charlevoix region of Québec to photograph the last vestiges of a disappearing rural world.
A story of an elderly woman who puts on her jewelry. Each treasured piece brings a reminder of the life she once had, filled with ballet, love, freedom and joy. Her current reality fades and she is renewed in the world of her past.
Alice is in a race against time to get basic human rights for her son Kevin, who has Cerebral Palsy.
A short drag video about becoming a businessman in public for a day.
The body in the techno craze? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency? Biopiracy and indigeneity? Military Robotics? Trafficking of women over the internet? E-Waste? Autobiographical and contemporary, this interpretation of the delusions and illusions of the technocultural era delivers us Out, Into This World….
One woman’s very personal story about her journey from hardship in Zimbabwe through the rigours of the immigration process to Canada.
"Those That Will Come, Will Hear" constructs a portrait of the erosion of languages; a global phenomenon that is still largely unexplored. This exploratory film will be a way to discover the essence of First Nations and Inuit languages still spoken in Quebec via the richness of their unique sounds and the rendering of this inherent musicality into visual imagery.
"A re-creation of my journey to the sweat lodge ceremony through sound image and narration."
"Buried Traces" is an 8 minute experimental documentary exploring questions of Métis identity, cultural loss and renewal.
Imagine a place smaller in size than Quebec, along the shores of the Mediterranean, where more than 19 religious communities live together. Imagine that some people, in spite of a tormented history, have found the strength and the wisdom not to yield to sectarianism.
A young mother looks to connect with her Aboriginal culture in order to teach her children.
The story of a man lost in the Arctic during a blizzard and his mysterious rescuer
"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.
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
Half-breed Alice attempts to become queen and struggles with the Red Queen and the White Queen's disapproval of her racial transgressions. A funny and quirky take on race, this piece stars Cosmosquaw as the Red Queen, Shawna Dempsey as the White Queen, and Thirza Cuthand as Alice.
Réflexion sur le rôle et le pouvoir des femmes dans les communautés autochtones du Nord et du Sud.
"Black Hands, Trial of the Arsonist Slave" is about Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a Black slave accused of burning Montreal in 1734.
In their familiar, humorous style, Millan and Dempsey explore the elements of passionate lesbian love. A woman stands in isolation, clad in a paper ball gown that is both fragile and stiff. On it, and on her environment, are reflected projections of her desire and its denial.
Reflecting upon power, madness, and poverty, this tape superimposes three matrix scenes: images of a rambling man from Santiago; footage from a Chilean TV program featuring Pinochet commemorating the military coup; and images of a community from the periphery of Santiago during a cultural and artistic gathering.
« Collage » des images publicitaires du « féminin ». L'enchaînement des images déconstruit le modèle irréel de la femme que la publicité véhicule dans les revues « féminines » et dans les annonces télévisées.
When Land and Body Merge began with the artists and curator meeting online, and over a two month period creating work through video and writing that allowed them to connect and build a relationship from afar. They worked with the idea of a call and response with Lindsay creating work, and Jaime responding to it, and vice versa.
A young trans man notices himself, becomes transfixed with his image and starts flirting leading up to a tentative, yet hot kiss.
Inspired by the 8mm app, Garland's Quiet Steps is an instrumental music video of the artist's experience of living in Vancouver.
Animal, fish and bird pictographs struggle to escape the filmic and musical presence of environmental poisons. Primarily an environmental picture, “Leaving the Poisons Behind” can also be seen as a forum for meditation on the idea of leaving behind personal poisons - smoking, drugs, drinking, abusive relationships, and so on.
This video visually explores the microcosm of old rotting wallpaper in abandoned farm houses.
An incident at the fridge. Some floozy, a gal in waiting, a gal in a camisole, a guy in a dress, a gal in a kilt, and a gal in charge.
Jenny Johnson is the story of a girl who takes desperate measures to get her ears pierced.
An experimental road movie made up of digital photographs and Quicktime films from a toy camera.
In "Grandma Smokes for Jesus’ Love", Erika MacPherson is engaged in a dialogue with the stories of her grandma.