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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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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.
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.
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.
"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.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
We are thrilled to announce that Axelle Demus has been hired as VUCAVU’s Educational Sector Outreach Consultant. Axelle is a FOCAS (Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support) postdoctoral fellow at McGill University’s School of Information Studies (archivalfocas.org)....
TWO/DOH is an evocative poetic pastiche exploring the public and private spaces of desire, and its intersection with the cultural and erotic connections between two women of different origins: Persian/Armenian and South Asian/Sri Lankan.
Alice is the daughter, the ‘oriental pearl’, of filmmaker Nicole Giguère. ‘Big Noses’ (da bi zi) is the familiar Chinese term for Westerners such as Nicole.
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...
The forbidden love between an Owl and a Fox drives them away from friends and family as they search for happiness together.
Lysanne poured her heart and soul in the 2012 Quebec student protests. In the midst of the movement’s demise, she loses her way and finds herself by her own thoughts and motivations...
Table Dance is a celebration of the handwork produced by women during the mid to late 20th century. Over 160 doilies take to the dance floor, throwing off their matronly reputations to prove age is no barrier to having a good time.
“Borders” is an intimate exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: top surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. “Borders” is available as a single-channel work or as an extended installation.
In this atmospheric film a young woman journeys home, where her father has become a precarious radio preacher. Yet his poetic, apocalyptic rants are seeping across the flat-lands from his abandoned dwellings while the walls of which flicker with projections of his deranged mind.
In "Grandma Smokes for Jesus’ Love", Erika MacPherson is engaged in a dialogue with the stories of her grandma.
The Complete Book of Roses—pages 1–114. A brief glimpse of the disconnect between digital devices and recording the “natural.” Made during Video Pool’s Media Arts Residency (2019-2020) using the Apollo monitor and microscope camera.
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 non-linear narrative about women, witches and contemporary reclaiming of women’s spirituality.
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.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
Video collage that approaches memory and how we remember, by overlaying images and sound, to create a disorienting moment in time.
"Black Hands, Trial of the Arsonist Slave" is about Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a Black slave accused of burning Montreal in 1734.
Everyone sees. No one tells.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
Dude? Dude.
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.
Set to music by Little Hawk, this animated and starkly honest story is a daughter’s tribute to her estranged mother.
Cuthand uses a latent gas mask fetish as a jumping off point for looking at their role as a participant in the Whitney Biennial during a contentious year for the museum which had a war profiteer on the board.
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.
For over sixty years, loving grandmother Cecile St. Amant has been keeping a deep secret - she is Métis.
A short drag video about becoming a businessman in public for a day.
Don’t Blink For 45 Seconds (After Kathy Dillon) is a 45 second performative video work addressing the thresholds and limitations of the body in relation to control.
The 1990 Oka crisis from the perception of a child and performed by the survivors, 25 years later.
An ode to my daily environment.
What exactly is a sissy? Sissy explores masculinity, gender identity, misogyny and self-acceptance.
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.
Six teenagers go through their first emotional flutters. Boy-girl relationships, friendship, first love butterflies in the stomach, body changes, sexuality… Why is everything so complicated?
Filmmaker documents his mother making culture bread, Bannock.
A 70s TV sitcom set around a young group of artists.
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.
Do you like your body?
When both her grandmothers are diagnosed with the early onset of dementia, filmmaker A. Megan Turnbull feels a strong compulsion to return to Winnipeg and make a film about them.
Since the launch of the VUCAVU platform in 2016, we have collaborated with artists, educators, and arts organizations across the country to present a wide variety of independent Canadian films and video art online. Artists are always compensated for the dissemination of their works, and the artworks can often be rented individually for VOD viewing after the programming free period has expired. Programs are always accompanied by bilingual curatorial texts exploring the themes addressed in the selection, and many of them also include recordings of roundtable discussions and conversations with the artists!
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.