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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.
Our payment processing company has informed us that the online form employed to add a site users' payment info to their VUCAVU Rental Account will stop functioning on February 28th, 2025. The estimated cost to fix this form is prohibitive pricey. While we weigh our options and look for funding to mitigate the change, for now, this form will be allowed to lapse.
Fanny meets her high school friends for the annual Switch & Bitch Party.
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.
"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.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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: 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.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
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.
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.
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.
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: CENSORSHIP 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.
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.
Open Water is an immersive short documentary film about a 61-year-old woman's attempt to swim across the largest freshwater lake in the world.
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!
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.
“The Script” presents a collage of revealing moments pulled from material in the Prelinger Archives, an online collection of over 11,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial and amateur) films made between the 1910s – 1980s.
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?
Picariello and Lassandro investigates the real-life story of Filumena “Florence” Lassandro and Emilio Picariello, Italian immigrants who were convicted and hanged in 1923 for the murder of an Alberta Provincial Police officer.
In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Watch as preeminent trans culture-makers of our time breathe new life into those who redefined gender in the midcentury.
Two ersatz “Indian warriors” chase a beautiful Indian maiden through the streets of Winnipeg but she loves Chief Big Bear. Who is the hunter, and who the hunted in this tableaux?
A personal film, providing an intimate look at family and tradition through the making of fish soup.
An endearing portrait of a South Asian father as he attempts to give life and marital advice to his bodybuilding and image-obsessed son. This deeply touching, comedic short film is an autobiographical piece that stars the director’s own father.
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.
Inheriting her father’s studio, Jennifer Alleyn finds herself drawn to the intimate space, still exuding the artist’s imagination.
Change of life? Shedding skin? The political context might confuse its' situation, but the narrator insists : Jacques can still hope.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
High Altitude explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in the modern world.
Video collage, documenting a week spent in Chicago.
"Black Hands, Trial of the Arsonist Slave" is about Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a Black slave accused of burning Montreal in 1734.
This collaborative work was made by Jaylene and Winona along with their mentor Jackie Traverse as an experimentation for their first film.
The story of a man lost in the Arctic during a blizzard and his mysterious rescuer
An experimental documentary that abstracts the roads I travel on a daily basis.
A nephew's journey
A young mother looks to connect with her Aboriginal culture in order to teach her children.
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.
A home movie of Cree woman hunting is saved from being lost forever, but how does it compare to official Canadian history of northern Manitoba?
Riverside Queerness reveals hard moments in the Prairies' shadowed queer history. Three storytellers navigate muddy waters that is Manitoba's subconsciousness; where truth is blurred by the power of the currents.
Canadian Time 2 builds upon a 2006 Kirouac performance underwent at the Rijksakademie (Netherlands) where she painted time signatures on the wall in the hours awaiting the results of her program eligibility. In 2011, she translates a similar, yet more pronounced set of circumstances in a performance executed at the Receiver Festival in Charleston, SC. Alluding to the twelve-hour drive from her home in North Carolina to the Canadian border, she marries painting and tragi-comic theatre in a perfor
Shot entirely in 16mm black-and-white film using single-frame photography, "165708" employs in-camera techniques and chemical manipulation of processed film to produce an eidetic study of temporal elasticity. Techniques include flicker, time-lapse, light painting, stop motion, tinting, and toning. Combined with cycles of alternating exposed frames, these methods imbue the work with a rhythmic magnetism, apparent both in the tempo and the aesthetic of the images.
Judder is a stop motion animation detailing the lives of characters in a fractured reality, which is functioning at different frame rates.
"This film is available in French only.Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." Sur un toit, une photographe croque le paysage. Soudain, un homme entre dans le champs de la caméra et la dérange. Que se passe-t-il ensuite?
Two imperfect women share one perfect body.
Kids In China is a high energy documentary of children in and around Kunming, China, from the unique point of view of the six-year old narrator.
Daring to follow one’s desires, create, initiate, engage with life, choose oneself… These are the gifts of maturity.
Roughly translated, “terroir” can signify both a “sense of place” as well as “coming from a place”. This piece is an image/sound portrait of personal geography as well as formal investigation of digital media.
Empowering Rural Women of Rajasthan is a video that shows Lodha’s colourful heritage, the music she learned in her childhood and her love for the women of Rajasthan. She focusses her attention on a group of women engaged in digging a community ditch, and shows the strong bonds that bind these women through the sharing of food and song. Empowering Rural Women of Rajasthan was produced as part of the New Artist in New Media Fund program at Video Pool Media Arts Centre.
Other Half Dating Service, the artist references dating videos from the 1980’s where individuals would discuss the type of partner that they were looking for.
A hand-processed, black-and-white ode to the secret world of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). The tide goes in, the tide goes out revels in the material and chemical qualities of the film medium, with the fragility of the film mirroring that of the jellyfish. Festival premiere at Images Festival 2012 (Toronto, ON)
An amusing selection of tips for achieving independent womanhood - 1800s to 1920.
Shot at the Vancouver Aquarium but based on an infamous popular youtube, this film enthusiastically loves on the magical and ancient jellyfish.