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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.
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 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 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.
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 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!
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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
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.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Discover our new VUCAVU.education postcards designed by Emil Woudenberg from Strike Design Studio, featuring a still from Caroline Blais’ film “Étoiles” (available for VOD on VUCAVU!). We’re pleased to pay Caroline for using their image and are dedicated to building VUCAVU in community with artists.
VUCAVU.education is a streaming platform that gives educators and students access to a curated selection of independent Canadian film and video art spanning more than 50 years. The shared catalogue includes documentary, fiction, experimental, and animation titles from artists across Canada, offering many unique views into the country’s cultural landscape.
VUCAVU.education is an initiative of the VUCAVU.com platform.
This video work documents Vancouver's past and future simultaneously.
When human souls break up, they seem irreconcilable. Is there an antidote for heartbreak?
In this alternate-history fable set in the 1980's AIDS Crisis, a closeted young man is thrust into the midst of an anti-government coup and finds that the animal within is stronger than the monsters that oppress.
Using a variety of animation techniques, this short, non-linear work questions aspects of the dominant origination myth.
Maddin's film incorporates found footage to provide a glimpse of wartime Berlin. Crowds of soldiers march in formation, play instruments and engage in training drills. Burning fires and a frantic pace contrast with the organized movements of the troops, perhaps foreshadowing the destructive events to come.
"This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Once again Sisler examines the physical and psychological realms of being a woman through the use of gesture as narrative. Here we are introduced to a woman demoralized from her unsuccessful job search. Sisler looks at the cultural imperative of Òpoise and our public presentation as women.
The Weaver's Circle is a short documentary film portrait of an environmental artist working in the downtown eastside of Vancouver.
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.
According to Goya: “The Sleep of Reason Begets Monsters.” Staring at the TV probably doesn’t help either. A short animated film about ‘us’ and ‘them’; media; and the contemporary Middle East. Sounds serious!
From one of anthropocene's most charismatic megafauna - Ailuropoda melanoleuca : "... and if I hear anyone else say 'isn't he cute'..."
“City of Dreams” is the story of Marcel “Bambi” Commanda, an Ojibway man from Rama First Nation. Marcel sits in a prison cell, reciting a passage from his life. The film touches on his marginalization and displacement in the urban environment, the loss of culture, language and traditions, and his attempt to regain what he has lost. A poet, performer, drummer and emerging film and video maker, Marcel passed away in 1994 just after filming was finished.
Inkster’s beautiful fiction references the destruction of Africville on the outskirts of Halifax in 1969. Four characters speak directly to the came ra about their lives and sexuality. This use of direct address says docu mentary, but the actors speak Inkster’s bittersweet words.
ars memorativa is an experimental documentary in four chapters that examines what is left behind when someone passes away and how memory traces emerge from the remaining artifacts and memories. the four people intersected with the directors life in a variety of ways and their stories are shared in a mix of forms: hand processed celluloid, digital animation, audio interview and home movies.
“Akin” marks the first creative collaboration between Toronto-based artist Chase Joynt (Everyday to Stay) and NYC-based filmmaker Brooke Sebold (Red Without Blue). With haunting suburban visuals backed by the rich sounds of Toronto based-band Ohbijou, “Akin” powerfully engages in a relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and her transgender son as they navigate silent secrets of a shared past.
An Asian Canadian man comes home with a new boyfriend for Christmas to find his younger brother, who is also gay, resentful for being left to care for their aging parents
Peril! charts the dangerous territory of women's everyday lives. The tightrope walker vacuums across Niagara Falls while pondering employment; the bearded lady waits by the phone while holding up the world; the human cannonball hurtles through space, unsure if she will ever land, but making the best of things. Using video imagery from Dempsey and Millan's performance, " The Headless Woman" (The Western Front, January 1998), this video features acts of daredeviltry by Sharon Bajer, Lorri Millan
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.
Multiple exposures of a single roll of Super 8 film allow a brief glimpse into the heart of this chimera: to be unidentified…unexplained.
A XXX cartoon about the urgent needs of 2 young monstrous queers.
Originally a multichannel video installation at the Royal Ontario Museum, Archaeology and You contemplates fallen empires, language and the motivating power of fear.
The curtains are drawn, a clown stands in the spotlight, the reception is dismal. Before s/he can even begin to perform, debilitating fear takes over.
“Dear Sis, I am sitting on the subway and all of a sudden, I have this urge to write to you...”, here begins an apology letter written from one sister to another. Starting with the issue of sibling rivalry, the video is a simple and straightforward examination of the connection and the distinction between one person and the next in the world we live in -- talking us further into the greater subject of humanity.
"You're just a woman.... smile and relax."
A woman is dragged through an empty field in scenario reminiscent of horror movies and news stories. But she is alert, impassive, and remains vigilantly focused on the camera. This hand-processed, Super 8 film juxtaposes degraded, awkwardly-staged footage of every woman's worst nightmare with an interior monologue regarding media representation of sexualized violence. The piece asks how violent, misogynist images play out in our psyches and in our culture. The film was commissioned by 8fest, To
Even lower astral entity is journey into space and violence, using found footage super 8 and digital imagery.
Business as Usual is an animated calaveras to the people of Earth, a darkly comic look at life in the city in the year 2110.
The film depicts a society controlled by an autonomous system.
A prairie farming family confronts an epic flood in the year 2040, after runaway climate change accelerates rainfall beyond all predictions.
"Dino-Orange" uses stop-motion to weave a retro sci-fi tale.
We know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man. [adapted from Orson Welles' adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds (Orson Welles And Mercury Theatre On The Air, Columbia Broadcasting System, 8:00 To 9:00 P.M., Sunday, October 30, 1938)]
Two young women journey from the outskirts of the city to a radioactive area deep in the woods.
Lily-May decides to tell those closest to her about the choice she has made. She intends to end her life at an assisted suicide clinic. When the time of our own death is predetermined, is saying goodbye any easier?
A fragment taken from a well known Science Fiction film is prematurely aged.
Emerging from wilderness, a man discovers that strange mechanical objects have replaced all the people.
A PSA for a shopping complex transmitted from a doomed alternate Earth.
Based on a true story - from 2053 AD!
Since the launch of the VUCAVU platform, we've collaborated with hundreds of artists, arts organizations and educators from across Canada to present bilingual curated and educational programming online. Artists always receive royalties and screening fees from these programs and they often include additional educational resources such as recordings of roundtable discussions and artist talks. After the paid or free programming period expires, available artworks can be rented individually.
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.