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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.
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.
The VUCAVU team, in consultation with our content partners, have made the decision to slowly shut down our view-on-demand (VOD) services on our platform to make way for a new direction in our operations. VOD changes will occur on VUCAVU over the coming months. As we make changes to the platform with our developers, we will periodically update this page and share news in our regular communications.
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.
Follow along with Spirit Bear as he realizes the importance of learning history to make better decisions now and for future generations of kids and cubs.
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.
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: PORN 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.
Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
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: CENSORSHIP dossier. The envelope and folders are opened and the contents examined.
"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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
We discover the Red mountain college a collective of graphic design students that was formed during and for the Quebec student strike.
This video makes use of animations of photographs and superimpositions of images. Bodies moving in space reproduce the drawings of Antonin Artaud.
A simple action is transformed through film into an emotive, voyeuristic piece.
Inspiration for this video came from Winona's dogs Kai and Tojo, their playful attitudes and the joy they bring to her life.
HOOLBOOM is a film that Arts Toronto commissioned local filmmaker Wrik Mead to make based on his impressions of fellow filmmaker Mike Hoolboom.
A lyrical meditation on moon cycles and the female body
The world of the foley artist revealed.
The artist ponders the possibilities of reconciliation.
Starving for companionship, Quinn pursues an unorthodox approach to resolving her intense loneliness.
Framed by poet Robert Lax's sculptural texts, skin of the cit-y wanders through mills and factories surrendering to the elements, deteriorating in solidarity with the isolated Maritime cities that erode beside them.
Port Lands presents Toronto’s industrial waterfront as a complex landscape in which past, present, and future geographies transition and converge.
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.
The “Manholes” series takes a pan of a single male figure and fragments it into a grid of peepholes. The microscopic mapping of the body is intimate yet clinical. The cascading body parts create a kaleidoscope of changing skin tones. It is difficult to find the point of origin on the subject’s body, though occasionally signifiers make it possible; an eye, a nipple or the toes suddenly orient the viewer.
Abandoned by her lover, a young woman finds comfort and safety in her basement apartment. Mundane routines, a diet of junk food and the warmth of the television insulate her from the pain and betrayal of her ill-fated relationship.
Première manifestation de l'artiste en Femme toupie, cette oeuvre explore le mouvement comme stratégie de déstabilisation de la normalité.
Un plan unique sur un dos dénudé offre une résistance à notre désir de voir. Une voix de femme raconte. Elle parle de son dos, du corps qui n'est pas transparent, de la douleur...
A daughter’s “coming out” to her mother falls on deaf ears. Sometimes people just don’t want to listen.
This video work is an experiment in self-love. BDSM and sex as a solo venture towards healing, growth, and transformation. Facing insecurity, welcoming loneliness, building strength to continue on living and loving myself.
A hand-processed diary film about memory, family and loss told through snapshots and landscapes in and around Ontario. Music by Sam Phillips. Screenings include: 2008 Berlin International Film Festival (in Forum Expanded section), 2008 Rotterdam International Film Festival. "nostagia isn't what it used to be, i can only picture the disappearing world when you touch me"
Adapted from a short story of the same name by Canadian author Andrew Pyper, “Breaking and Entering” is a poetic parable of a young man coming to terms with the death of his father. The film was near completion at the time of Hull's death and was subsequently finished by The Estate of Andrew Hull.
There are challenges one faces as a New Canadian.
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.
A video collage based on twenty-eight tracking shots of city scenes.
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.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
This intricate stop-motion animation interlaces Canada’s colonial past with writer-director Amanda Strong’s personal family history — and illuminates Cree, Métis, and Anishinaabe reclamation of culture, language, and Nationhood. (Danis Goulet, TIFF)
Grand Chief Sheila North investigates unsolved murder of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
A group of Vietnamese nationals is making their way to an unknown location in a shipping container to find a better life.
As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one's outwardly appearance.
"ôtênaw" is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.
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.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
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.
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.