We're sorry, but our site requires Javascript to be enabled. If you would like instructions on how to enable Javascript, please click here.
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.
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.
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 young loner struggles to make connection at a haunted summer camp.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
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.
"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.
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 female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
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.
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.
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.
Denis Gagnon, fashion designer, puts the final touches on his latest collection.
"This film is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos." "La naissance d'une messe" met en lumière le travail des comédiens et artisans réunis autour d'André Brassard pour la création de la pièce de Michel Tremblay, Messe solennelle pour une pleine lune d'été.
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.
Loveletter to Saint Boniface is a bilingual experimental documentary that unravels personal and community memories regarding racism and homophobia while exploring notions of language and culture.
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.
A constructed cinematic space where life and death exist.
Artist talk with Nelson Wu (With Audio Description)
Editing out the interviewer, "Controversies" presents a popular call in radio show with just the callers.
...stepped solitude of a shoe cobbler drifting in absence
Inside the Quebec student strike.
A portrait of bombastic film producer Greg Klymkiw, who was a major player in the DIY Winnipeg film scene of the 1980s and was instrumental in launching Guy Maddin's career.
A camera is locked upon a dancers face, framed in a perpetual and intimate close-up. The film gives the viewer license to stare, to invest and spend time gazing at a face and we feel it in our bodies. This film was made with over 300 stills from a Holga Camera and 8 rolls of Super 8 film.
Mixing fact and fiction, this film tells the story of Dr. F.R. Wake and his bizarre creation, which became known as "the fruit machine." In the 1960s, Wake was hired by the Canadian government to devise a series of tests that would expose homosexuals working in the civil service.
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.
The Long Form Lesbian Census polls the Toronto lesbian community to find out important statistics.
Butch women discuss the sometimes complicated relationship they have with their breasts.
“Transforming FAMILY” jumps directly into an ongoing conversation among trans people about parenting. It's a beautiful snapshot of current issues, struggles and strengths of transexual, transgender and gender fluid parents (and parents-to-be) in North American society today.
A lonely figure walks to a private screening room. What he is getting excited about is not what it may appear.
It's a journey most of us are familiar with. One that starts with lust, passion, intense love and joy and eventually dwindles down the road of routine, familiarity and day to day banalities.
In “Workin' on Grandma,” the 5th installment of the CHRISTEENE Video Collection, burnt memories and “deviled pussy holes” string themselves along the faded lines of CHRISTEENE's family tree, all tucked in tight under a blanket of Korean karaoke dreams.
A young man pursues the apparition of a loved one who disappeared one turbulent night.
Balthazar has been friends with siblings Christian and Lyla since childhood. As the trio struggles with coming-of-age in a rural, conservative Canadian town, they must confront escalating desires for one another that threaten to destroy their delicate bond.
Dawn tells the story of two strangers who have more in common than they first realize. After Tye detects what he considers a racist glance from another passenger on the evening train home, a confrontation ensues. Tye is shocked to discover that they share something big, and both men are forced to face their prejudices in ways they never expected.
Two male blow-up dolls become puppets in this short. Not only is one of the men out of air, but both of them are tragically out of synch with one another.
Treaty X features an audio track and a layering of composited video footage with themes of connection/disconnection to land and waters, treaty rights, and the way capitalism monetizes nature. The Treaty #3 territory comprises 55,000 hectares of land, and annuity payments of $5 have never been adjusted for inflation.
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)
A short video featuring composited imagery with themes of the transitory nature of moments in time, the ephemeral passing of everyday mundane experiences, and dealing with loss.
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.
A place called home, a North End poem.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
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.
a Tribute to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWGs)
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
It's New Year's Eve in Tijuana, Mexico.
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.
still is part of an ongoing body of work that addresses the persistence of colonial structures in contemporary Canada through a critical white settler lens. These works confront facets of this overarching concern through a practice of performing interventions into the land/scape and tampering with iconic elements of Canadian visual culture. Integrating the residue of an off-camera performance within a quintessentially ‘Canadian’ landscape as a politically, culturally and historically mitigated r
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.