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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.
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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.
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.
Two sisters attempt to find common understanding amidst bickering.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
A female firefighter takes her daughter along for a day on the job.
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.
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.
A presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
"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.
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.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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)....
Her anger is like a fever.
Cette vidéo relève plusieurs facteurs qui déterminent l'accès à l'information sur le sida au Mali, ainsi que les conditions qui influencent la diffusion de cette information auprès des femmes maliennes.
In this lively, intimate film, a large black mole above an Asian woman's breast serves as a metaphor for cultural and sexual difference.
Invisible spiritual and psychological issues permeate every aspect of life, and yet remain hidden in average experience. The transformation from suffering to joy is one such process, and is explored in this three-part piece that pays homage to the video art of the 1980s and 1990s.
Three cleaning ladies launch a campaign to smash useless old plates in a discussion of surveillance and housework.
A reworking of images of Princess Diana drawn from a CNN tribute called “The People’s Princess.” The isolated and manipulated images point to England’s colonial past and to the elusiveness of a media image.
“In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet launched a violent coup in Chile that overthrew the Marxist elected president Salvador Allende. Thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and exiled as a result. My family was among the many that were exiled in Canada.” - Francisca Duran In this experimental, autobiographical film, a young woman remembers and recounts difficult childhood memories of the 1973 coup in Chile when her family was forced into exile.
This paint on glass animation tells this dark tale of a soldier who returns home from war to find his girlfriend has left him.
"Slumberparty 2018" is a remake of a 1984 Super 8 film called Slumberparty made by the Positive Pornographers, a mostly queer collective of Toronto-based artists, activists and sex-workers. Commissioned by A-Space Gallery's "Developing a Women's Erotic Language on Film" workshop, Slumberparty was made as a direct intervention in Toronto’s feminist porn debates.
Imprint is rooted in personal and national narratives – stories of refuge sought in a country founded on a Colonial process itself saturated with the displacement. A winter storm insists its presence on an expansive flat plain where a figure performs a ritual in two parts.
An examination of how art and truth come into conflict at the trial of a young man accused of rape.
"Girl From Moush" is a poetic montage of the artist’s journey through her subconscious Armenia. It is not an Armenia based in a reality, but one which appears, like the mythical city of Shangra La, when one closes one’s eyes.
A girl with the power to heal conducts a ceremony that attracts a shapeshifter.
A young man takes break from work, skateboarding along to see his favourite Winnipeg murals.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
"Buried Traces" is an 8 minute experimental documentary exploring questions of Métis identity, cultural loss and renewal.
"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.
Burning an Effigy considers intergenerational legacies of the Indian residential schools, the colonial presence, and its persistent impacts on community.
September 2013. The Court ruling is reached. Almost a quarter million Dominicans of Haitian descent have just become stateless because of the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal’s decision.
Inspiration for this video came from Winona's dogs Kai and Tojo, their playful attitudes and the joy they bring to her life.
"Bloodstorm" considers the paralells between the unpredictability of a storm and the turmoil of living with HIV/AIDS.
A Johannesburg neighourhood unites five people’s ambitions, desires, and struggles to survive over the course of a Friday.
"Muskeg Special" was one of the first 'official' Winnipeg Film Group productions back in 1979 when a group of intrepid independents ventured North with a 16mm Arriflex and the curiosity to discover what life was like in small communities along the Hudson Bay Rail line. That summer also marked the 50th Anniversary of completion of the rail line from The Pas to Churchill (approximately 510 miles) providing a reference point for the journey.
Brown Town Muddy Water is a documentary about the Indigenous Musicians that lived, died, prospered and survived Winnipeg's notorious main street strip during the 1960’s.
This is a Photograph of Me is a video poem using Margaret Atwood’s poem of the same name as a script. A gentle visual meandering, the landscape, water, and cabin as metaphor for body, and how we are placed, and place ourselves, psychologically in space.
FILM(knout) concentrates on a young woman who sets down to the task of tying rope. Meanwhile she has the same idea, and a confrontation of self endures.
Imagine a place smaller in size than Quebec, along the shores of the Mediterranean, where more than 19 religious communities live together. Imagine that some people, in spite of a tormented history, have found the strength and the wisdom not to yield to sectarianism.
During the Arab revolution, a love story between two women – a Canadian and a Syrian American – turns into an international socio-political thriller spotlighting media excesses and the thin line between truth and falsehood on the Internet.
Welcome to the French District of Florida, Snowbird’s paradise.
In the single-channel video "Hybred", artist Christine Kirouac translates a conversation with her mother into an exploration of the stereotypes and subjectivities surrounding her Métis identity (Cree/Irish).
While posing for caricatures, strangers reveal themselves by sharing their diverse personal stories in rapid succession. This work explores the complexity of intimacy, identity and representation.
A young Aboriginal man's thoughts and emotions iterate his personal growth through this lyrical story.
In this film, Renate Gravert-Martins’s photography and life is told through her work and 16mm reinterpretations of her images.
In February, 1998, the artist traveled back to Hong Kong to revisit his elementary school, La Salle Primary. Time has changed but there are still the same Chinese Catholic boys in school uniforms.
« Collage » des images publicitaires du « féminin ». L'enchaînement des images déconstruit le modèle irréel de la femme que la publicité véhicule dans les revues « féminines » et dans les annonces télévisées.
Filmmaker documents his mother making culture bread, Bannock.
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.