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VUCAVU’s Digital Collections Assistant will perform tasks associated with bilingual communications, marketing, web content management, and other administrative tasks as needed. ** VUCAVU acknowledges the Government of Canada's Canada Summer Jobs program for their support of this position.
We are proud to announce the launch of Desire Lines: Experimental Video as Social and Spatial Interventions in the GIV Collection. This bilingual educational guide was produced as part of the Through Feminist Lenses: Video Works at Groupe Intervention Vidéo Case Study, and is a collaboration between A/CA, Groupe Intervention Video (GIV), the Moving Image Research Lab (MIRL) at McGill, and VUCAVU. .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
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.
Four videos made during the pandemic in 2021.
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!
A Johannesburg neighourhood unites five people’s ambitions, desires, and struggles to survive over the course of a Friday.
A young Aboriginal girl's hopes and dreams are re-negotiated within the walls and tunnels of the institution of education.
After years of repression, an old woman's common sense goes head-to-head with the fantastic imagination of her inner child, who yearns to be free.
A Filipino new to Canada and a Filipino-Canadian woman fumble helping each other while waiting for their bus.
This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos.
Retro children’s TV takes a comical jab when one letter of the alphabet gets a new association.
"Buried Traces" is an 8 minute experimental documentary exploring questions of Métis identity, cultural loss and renewal.
On a cold fall evening, Leila is left alone to tend the family convenience store. A series of strange clients keep her in a constant state of apprehension. Language and cultural barriers also contribute to the making of a nerve-racking evening.
An experimental short exploring the tenuous grasp the promises we make have on our lives.
For Canadian-born women of Chinese origin, the wearing of this dress is fraught with tensions between desire and fear, wonder and contestation.
The 1990 Oka crisis from the perception of a child and performed by the survivors, 25 years later.
Comprising five hundred images McFadden assembled to investigate the nature of homosocial and queer male relationships, A Separate Peace includes the reading of an eponymous essay the artist wrote in response to this collection and the end of his longterm relationship.
In a relationship, two women decide that the white partner will carry her partner’s Indigenous child.
The fear of bridges.
Gerry Barret: The Original Aboriginal takes us from studio interview to the stage at Rumor’s Comedy Club and the Cat Sass Tavern. Gerry’s repertoire includes topics like: what should an Indian D.J. sound like on the radio?... A day in the life of Canada’s first native prime minister... a ballad to Elijah Harper and much more, including a stop at a movie shoot.
Longboy outs himself as a First Nations FAG - who is living with HIV - hoping to sever attached preconception of two spirited peoples. In a contemplative search, the artist recollects how HIV/AIDS has affected him and his surrounding community, revealing a strength through loss.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
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.
Dude? Dude.
Shot improvisationally in 2010, shortly after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, this film takes a lyrical approach to examining recent history and the process of reconstruction in the post-war era.
Dedicated to the artist’s father, this experimental tape begins sorting through identities contaminated by the generalized racism of white society and its degrading commercial exploitation of Native culture, i.e., “Indian” drums and doll souvenirs. Five young natives search for reconnection to their families, their stories, traditions and their role within community.
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.
"Muskeg Special" was one of the first 'official' Winnipeg Film Group productions back in 1979 when a group of intrepid independents ventured North with a 16mm Arriflex and the curiosity to discover what life was like in small communities along the Hudson Bay Rail line. That summer also marked the 50th Anniversary of completion of the rail line from The Pas to Churchill (approximately 510 miles) providing a reference point for the journey.
She Draws a Circle reflects on the work of generations of women to interrupt cycles of violence and oppression, looking to the ways in which our spiritual connections to the land and one another help us to hold space for regenerative healing, bringing the hidden to light drawing on that light to encircle each successive generation.
Jean-Luc Godard trips over her record player and falls down the stairs.
Récit ironique d'un corps qui a perdu toute maîtrise sur son visage...
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
A walk through the city of Maputo becomes a poetic visual essay. Inspired by two Mozambican poems, its central themes are: shoes, time, space, history, humanity, reading the asphalt and the intrusive effect of a camera. Scenes from everyday life and a series of portraits link with radio loops and local ambiance sound.
An ambient track of evening sounds accompanies rephotographed sketches of the night sky by Jerry Spevak. “The Observatory” turns the heavens on its head: the blackness of space becomes the white of the page, the stars and galaxies precise points of black graphite.
The camera mounted on a dolly moves through Mater, an installation of mother and child figures by Elvira Finnigan.
"This film is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Par une approche novatrice, la violence conjugale est abordée sous l'angle de la dévictimisation, de la reprise de pouvoir sur sa vie.
In this video Hrabluik animates a three-legged figure through an absurd set of drawn instructions.
An experiment dance piece investigating the concept of surface.
Time is measured in increments of what falls on the kitchen floor.
The bittersweet story of strongman and magician Mike Swistun who, for thirty days in 1923, was the strongman with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
A depressed new mother wrestles the demon she believes has possessed her in order to protect her baby.