We're sorry, but our site requires Javascript to be enabled. If you would like instructions on how to enable Javascript, please click here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
"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.
Grand Mother Tongue pairs poetry, spoken in Plains Cree, and breath with the intimate imagery of strawberries being consumed bite-by-bite, and finger lick for finger lick.
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!
How would you react to past situations? Are you over past issues and do new ones arise? Nicole Shimonek and Victoria Prince discuss the implications of the video of a younger Nicole writing on a chalkboard.
A distinct world – that is often an isolated part of a larger world – is viscerally envisioned in this uniquely hand- processed film.
"Slapleather" is a buffet of bolo ties, loud topaz western wear and a whole lot of Achy Breakin’ Boot Scootin’ Boogyin’.
The surveillance video depicts the omnipresence of internalized social norms restricting the lives of many women living under the gaze of the rigid traditions.
After more than 100 years of restless colonialism, the Dene People strive to reconnect with the land they live on.
A dreamily crafted short about a second-generation immigrant who contemplates his unfamiliarity with his South Asian heritage and his disconnection with his parent’s experience while he empties the family home.
A child’s poem about time and space. A child closes its eyes, thinks about the world and tries to imagine if everything has been walked on. Are there any new ideas? Is everything known?
Trying to revisit her pre-baby days by taking a trip to China, the filmmaker realize how much she has changed.
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.
Hand-drawn illustrations animate this touching personal story about the "60’s Scoop” of Aboriginal children into the Canadian child-welfare system.
This animation uses watercolor paintings of child-morphed creatures, poppies and dismembered legs, based on collaged photos from my animation ‘Nothing ever happened’, to produce a commentary on loss.
"Vessel for a lower Ocean" is a docu-poem which explores difficult questions around body memory and communication.
A place called home, a North End poem.
Invited to speak at an Indigenous Revolutionary Meeting, the narrator describes an intimate encounter with an Evil Colonizing Queen which led to Turtle Island's contraction of an invasive European flora.
Five lifelong friends. Four are fearful of their future. One must face the fact that she may not have one.
Perspectives on Western Canadian Métis culture.
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.
"Americano" is filmmaker Carlos Ferrand’s road-movie about his trip through the Americas from Patagonia to the Arctic.
When Marc Roger, a public reader, sets himself the challenge of walking from Saint-Malo, France, to Bamako, Mali, along with a donkey laden with books to be read aloud, filmmaker Catherine Hébert (The Other Side of the Country) joins him in Morocco, her camera rolling."
An experimental video meditation exploring the artist’s position and placement in white culture. Continuing his search for identity within a fractured cultural environment, the artist reflects on his history of dislocation and negotiates with the boundaries that include aspects from within both the dominate White society and First Nations history and culture.
It started with a shot in a back alley, rage and frustration. It ended with a rap video about intolerance. Produced through the Aboriginal Teen Video Initiative.
It’s the Lone Ranger Show!
In an Algeria divided between tradition and modernity, two young adults named Karim and Hadjer could not love each other free.
A manuscript, written in 1954 to aid missionaries working among the Cree speaking natives of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, is the basis for this reflective narrative.
For almost 40 years, Colette Whiten has quietly and powerfully challenged gender dynamics, political power and mass media imagery... This video portrait was commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts and the IMAA.
Short visits a large furry convention and shoots some amazing creatures. Short is fascinated by the identity politics and history surround this community which are very similar to the transgender community.
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.
A celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving.
In this looped video, women in a quilting-bee configuration weave delicate replicas of spider webs.
This film is available in French only.
In this cautionary romance about life in the editing suite, the short monologue reminds us that, in the end, even the most advanced technology is usually handheld.
Jeff is driving. Nydia is behind him. The motorcycle glides between cars and time is suspended. The trip ends and Nydia goes back to her monotonous routine. But everything is fine, Jeff will return.
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.
Chaos at its best, at an uncontrolled intersection in Hanoi.
Offers passersby the opportunity to don a mask and become either an elephant or a mosquito. A look at people's inhibitions.
Looking In A Mirror And Daring Myself to Cry is a confessional animation about the emotions we avoid and actions we hide from view: fears of failure, disappointment, and depression.