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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
A young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
Four videos made during the pandemic in 2021.
Can’t Help Falling in Love with You follows Laura Ohio documenting Los Angeles through the dual lens of artist and sex worker. The film reveals the production of emotional experiences and the radical intimacy in which “artists and prostitutes are compelled to connect with complete strangers: a public. They share themselves with everyone but no one in particular” (Baudelaire).
A one take Super 8 snapshot of the inception and obsolescence of a Winnipeg landmark.
Mount Rundle is about coincidence, destiny, self-affirmation, and the unpredictable nature of the creative process. The video centers on a small landscape painting the artist made at the age of twelve.
This recording of a VUCAVU OUTREACH presentation from April 2020 is led by Jacquelyn Hébert, VUCAVU’s Community and Program Manager, and our co-presenters Samuel La France, Executive Director from the Images Festival and Morgan Sears-Williams, Member Services and Program Outreach Co‑ordinator for CFMDC. (VUCAVU OUTREACH presentation recording from April 18, 2020)
Footage of the Hampton Court Palace maze, established in 1689 and perhaps the most famous existing maze in the world, is contrasted with Anishinabe petroforms found in Manitoba’s Whiteshell area. The English, mannered, controlled hedges are designed to limit sight; the rocks of the Canadian Shield, arranged in patterns of turtles, snakes and humans, were created to inspire teaching and healing. Finnigan interrogates the wisdom of the colonizing versus the colonized culture.
David Roche looks out from the screen and starts to talk about love as he rises in the freight elevator to his lofty abode.
While filming his native land, David B. Ricard is entrusted with the task of documenting the creating process of a show of poetry and music across the Canadian Francophonie. This project gives him the opportunity to question the relationship to rooting (land, language), adaptation (poetry, territory) and the process of relationship with the other (team, subject).
"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.
A woman reconnects with her grandmother's past through drawings done by Daphne Odjig
This is a video about drawing. It gives view of processes, not of completed drawings.
This experimental video visualizes electrical events.
Butch women discuss the sometimes complicated relationship they have with their breasts.
When our intrepid heroine Darcy gets her heart broken on her 30th birthday, her friends rally around to help her recover.
This short documentary-style interview film takes a quick look at some key terms that originated within queer Black and POC communities (such as the ballroom scene), tracing their cultural significance to contemporary mainstream popular culture.
This 16mm B&W cut-out animation borrows narrative tropes from early Atari video games, silent films, and anime cartoons, offering a weird story and hybrid aesthetic.
Cupid gets beaten at his own game.
Comprising five hundred images McFadden assembled to investigate the nature of homosocial and queer male relationships, A Separate Peace includes the reading of an eponymous essay the artist wrote in response to this collection and the end of his longterm relationship.
"Gabey and Mike: A Jewish Summer Camp Love Story" takes its name from a song by Mermaid Café - a folk band comprised of Andi D., Joe A. Rider and Merrill Nisker (now known as ‘Peaches’) that gained popularity at Canadian Jewish summer camps in the early 90s. The video juxtaposes the tale of the band with playful re-creations of the story of Gabey and Mike, in a queer re-staging of the classic summer camp movie.
A young trans man notices himself, becomes transfixed with his image and starts flirting leading up to a tentative, yet hot kiss.
A woman attempts to pull herself out of her sinking mood by taking a bath.
Playing with sexuality and erotic imagery, this short looks at taboos and different ideas of what’s hot.
Fresh Fruit explores the inner yearnings of a bored hostess, as she tastes a cornucopia of sweet and juicy offerings.
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.
This video interrogates how subjectivities, political stances, and modes of social engagement formed elsewhere contribute to our positioning within the local, cultural landscape of Vancouver.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
There are many memories of childhood that have slipped through the cracks. Most that I can recollect were of the differences in myself in comparison to the others around. Taken away at one week of age from my Indian community and given to a white foster family, my experience of the authentic Indian and where my placement is, within this dream of authenticity, comes from an infected locale.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
Founder: Noun- a person who establishes an institution or settlement. Verb- (of a ship) fill with water and sink. (of a plan or undertaking) fail or break down.
A short film on the subject of Indigenous Love. What is (romantic) love? And what does it mean to you? 8 couples share their thoughts
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
Hoop Dancers is a silent video featuring four young men in powwow regalia playing pick-up basketball.
Numb, questions Kanata’s relationship with Indigenous peoples, allowing the viewer to contemplate the next 150 year relationship.
Whitewash examines slavery in Canada and its omission from the national narrative. The country prides itself as being the benevolent refuge where enslaved Africans who were brought to United States gained their freedom via the Underground Railroad. That powerful image overshadows the fact that slavery was legal in Canada for over 200 years under both French and British rule.
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.
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.