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VUCAVU is delighted to launch three new programs in the Educational Guide series from Archive/Counter-Archive (A/CA); 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
Roland, 91, walks during the winter in a field as wide as the eye can see where the borders are disappearing and in which he meets and confronts his fear.
“Perdere: to lose, to waste, to destroy” explores the rapidly deteriorating landscapes surrounding Tuktoyaktuk, NT along Canada’s northwest coast. Through contemplative drone footage and a soundscape using hydrophone and natural soundscape recordings, this work bears witness to the tragic effects of climate change along the shores of the Beaufort Sea.
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!
"Vessel for a lower Ocean" is a docu-poem which explores difficult questions around body memory and communication.
The re-imagination of the generational passage of traditional knowledge between a woman and her grandmother moon.
The camera scans a woman’s body in microscopic detail. A voice-over asks such questions as, “what is the dividing line between the public and the private?”.
Covered, remixed, and sampled by hundreds of artists and fans alike, Creep by Radiohead is an epic 90s anthem of nihilism and self-loathing.
Toronto, July 27, 2013, shortly after midnight.
An elderly man living with dementia invites an unexpected guest over for lunch.
This playful, animated documentary portrays the charming, yodeling farmer with humour and wit and “looks the way yodeling sounds.”
A video that examines the paradigm of misogyny, deeply rooted and internalized in our culture. The biblical story of Lot and a horrifying event that my grandfather experienced, forced me to consider my own responsibility and lack of innocence.
What do we bring with us from our homeland that remains in our possession? What do we discard? What do we pass on? Language, memories, objects that bear witness to past lives and often, to other cultures...
A woman daydreams in the Winnipeg winter, and discovers the Don Juan within. Don Juan, as a woman, gives us glimpses of her life with a collection of cross-dressers, unlikely saints and martyrs. Don Juan becomes a martyr for women’s pleasure. Actors in this video are Shawna Dempsey, Lorri Millan, Rebecca Popoff, Erika MacPherson and Lori Weidenhammer.
"How to re-awaken the contemplative eye? to falter and be still. When my mother died, my mouth contracted and pressed its seed into my throat. i surrendered and resisted.
Produced for Much Music’s Word Up program, "What Does a Lesbian Look Like?" examines a plethora of big dyke stereotypes and embraces them. Performed by Shawna Dempsey and a whole whack of gals. Created by Dempsey and Millan.
A girl with the power to heal conducts a ceremony that attracts a shapeshifter.
Check out granny's bingo card collection and more on everybody's favourite morning show, coming to you from Darryl's basement and over your local cable television network.
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Trade is an experimental video short exploring concepts of borders and trade, and their relationship to notions of collective history and national identity in the North American colonial context.
YOU ME HIV AIDS RESPONSIBILITY REALITY a public service announcement for HIV/AIDS awareness. we will walk the land, breathe the air and drink from the stream. i came across the living tree, branches flowing in the breeze its roots adhering to mother earth YOU ME HIV AIDS RESPONSIBILITY REALITY
Waking up after thousands of years of being encased in ice, the voice of a creature is heard, emerging to find that the world is a much different place, although some things remain the same, he is hungry, and he is still an Apex predator, at the top of the food chain. The soundtrack is composed of samples of audio from the largest mass calving event in recorded history (when arctic ice melts and collapses into the ocean). There's a new monster in town.
"A re-creation of my journey to the sweat lodge ceremony through sound image and narration."
Shot on Bolex, and hand-processed, the short film documents the steps of creating an oil painting. Narrated by rural Manitoba artist Vivian Paschke.
Filmmaker Coleen Rajotte returns to Pikangikum First Nation in northwestern Ontario, a community with an unusually high suicide rate.
The fear of bridges.
Riverside Queerness reveals hard moments in the Prairies' shadowed queer history. Three storytellers navigate muddy waters that is Manitoba's subconsciousness; where truth is blurred by the power of the currents.
A place called home, a North End poem.
Rob Vilar, the most criminally unknown actor who has walked the planet Earth. Salvaged from a dumpster near the National Screen Institute's offices in Winnipeg, this video is the seminal preface to this man and his evolving craft.
Colette Balcaen set herself up in the middle of an ancestral field with her large red knitted art piece, to contemplate the prairie and all the generations of women who have seen the changes over the years.
Typical imagery of a naughty wahine dancing while removing her sarong is looped and superimposed on images associated with Hawaii such as fish, surfers, volcanoes and the Kodak Hula Show. The sound is a loop from the Elvis song “Dreams Come True in Blue Hawaii” and the effect is haunting with a touch of humor.
“HANDTINTING is the apt title of a film made from outtakes from a Job Corps documentary which features hand-tinted sections. The film is full of small movements and actions, gestures begun and never completed. Repeated images, sometimes in colour, sometimes not.
In this two channel video, the image of cutting and sewing a pure white cloth underpins a narration about clean laundry, comfortable chairs, moths, dust and death, drawing parallels between repetition in the home, and tradition in the House of God.
When Once There Was, composed from audio and video footage from around the Peace River Valley, is a non-narrative exploration of the shores of the Peace River; an area the BC Government approved for flooding as part of the development of Site ‘C’, the largest hydroelectric dam in the area.
"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.
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?
"Francophone-hybride" is a short documentary that was shot in Winnipeg during the Festival du voyageur, an annual winter festival which celebrates Manitoba’s Metis, Francophone and First Nations heritage.
100 Photoshop retouches to rebuild a skull damaged 40 years ago by a racist ...
In this video, performance artist, Bridget Moser interacts with an elaborate collection of therapeutic props.
Dying Down parallels and compares human and electrical energy using the image of a woman running and the structural aspects of video production.