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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
The VUCAVU team is growing: we welcome Yvette Sin, in the position of Digital Education Programming Assistant at VUCAVU. Yvette Sin is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and bookseller based in Toronto. Her award-winning short films have screened internationally, including at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth and TIFF Next Wave...
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)....
A woman deals with the death of her mother through self-annihilating tendencies.
In "Grandma Smokes for Jesus’ Love", Erika MacPherson is engaged in a dialogue with the stories of her grandma.
Children explain what resistance means to them.
A short sharp textual vignette of a girl's walk home in 1970's Canadian suburbia. Secrets kept for years are revealed, then obscured through the process of telling.
The house that bursts; the scene of the crime; the nucleus. A universe collapses on itself: all hell breaks loose.
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.
"You're just a woman.... smile and relax."
The word ‘hyper’ is derived from the Greek ‘above, beyond or outside’. In mathematics, hyper is used as a prefix, to denote four or more dimensions. Specifically, this work explores the possibility of passing to a fourth dimension wherein perception of past, present, and future becomes more fluid. This video was created in residency at Studio 303 Interdisciplinary Performance Centre in Montreal.
That formidable force of conservation officials, Lesbian National Parks and Services, presents three portraits of lesbian species in crisis. Not unlike the renowned 1970s Hinterlands Who's-Who series, these public service announcements point to the perils of habitat loss and poaching. The Marxist Feminist, the Lesbian Separatist and the Bull-Dykus Americanus are featured in this parody of nature education.
The Lost Mariner is an animated interpretation of Dr. Oliver Sacks' case study found in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Réalisée à partir de sons et de slogans enregistrés entre autres lors d’une manifestation des sans-papiers à Paris en 2005, la vidéo explore la relation entre manifestation et architecture.
When our intrepid heroine Darcy gets her heart broken on her 30th birthday, her friends rally around to help her recover.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
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.
A spoken word poem and minimalist audio track about a sexy highland stream, a love letter to the beauty found in nature, and the mysterious way beauty is suffused in the natural world, written in English and Anishinaabemowin.
After Birth, an inter-generational journey to return to a ceremonial custom of burying the ‘after birth.’ Together three women and their kids walk the land and affirm their intergenerational knowledge and active presence in ancestral memories and matrilineal leadership.
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.
This video poster for “Idle No More” was inspired by the young students at the Native Education College, that are engaged, often for the first time, in having their voices heard by Canadian society and the Canadian government.
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.
The re-imagination of the generational passage of traditional knowledge between a woman and her grandmother moon.
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.
In 2014 Lydia’s son, Colten Pratt, went missing off the streets of Winnipeg.
The 1990 Oka crisis from the perception of a child and performed by the survivors, 25 years later.
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.
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.
For over sixty years, loving grandmother Cecile St. Amant has been keeping a deep secret - she is Métis.
An inside look at how one jingle dress dancer physically and mentally prepares for competition pow-wows.
Un feu de paroles, en lectures et en entrevues, de Jean-Claude Labrecque à Michel Garneau en passant par François Charron et Louise Dupré, permettant d’aborder les thèmes de l’oralité, de l’influence du féminisme et de l’engagement dans la poésie actuelle.
Eddy, a psychic, nervous, little satyr and part-time on-line sex worker, makes crafts with viewers as he speaks about the pain of witnessing sexual violence.
An irreverent commercial for a fictitious diet program.
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.
This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos.
Who is up there? Who is at the top? This endeavor to move from one place to another was influenced by Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in which a character travels through an unknown landscape.
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.
From the heart of the planet’s slums and squats, individuals have taken over these marginalized worlds and erected cities in their own image.
In the stories of adoption, the mothers who gave birth were invisible. Exiled Mothers takes us on the artist Sharon Alward’s journey to recover her own repressed, secret, shaming memories from relinquishing her daughter in 1971.
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.