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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.
Sydnie Baynes is a Toronto-based multimedia artist and animator currently studying at OCAD University. She holds a BFA in Film Animation and creates work that explores Black history, identity, and self-love through storytelling and digital media. Her artistic practice bridges the worlds of education and independent media, with a focus on accessibility, empowerment, and cultural preservation. Welcome to the team Sydnie!
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.
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 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 presentation for filmmakers and artists with VUCAVU.com’s Digital Programming Intern, Stephanie Poruchnyk-Butler.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: PORN 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.
Clash of cultures, care of the elderly and four women trying to make sense of their unravelling family, this is Mum Singh.
As he is making a didgeridoo, Bernard Bosa tells us what vibration is for him, what it has done in his life.
Spirit Bear's friends teach him about residential schools and how he can help with reconciliation!
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.
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.
Oh Canada - Oh Covid documents the opening days of the coronavirus pandemic in Ottawa, Ontario Canada.
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!
Through excavated footage and narration, Sira examines the displacement of a family, beginning with the event the catapulted their exodus from Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion.
A gay man speaks about his body image and growing older in the age of the internet.
The youngest of 17 children, the filmmaker presents us with an intimate family portrait in 17 rolls of Super 8.
The video explores gay Asian men's (GAMs) cruising strategies on American gay sex hookup websites.
Trade is an experimental video short exploring concepts of borders and trade, and their relationship to notions of collective history and national identity in the North American colonial context.
An irreverent commercial for a fictitious diet program.
This version of the classic tale is explored through the internal narrative of Red Riding Hood herself. She is consumed with overwhelming anxiety about everything in her personal life and surrounding environment. Instead of being a comfort, Grandma’s house becomes the site of her resignation to events when fatigue eventually sets in. Visually playful, the main character changes from finger puppet to paper cut out, to human actor, while her inner self remains constant.
This video tells the story of a big boned butcher who finds passion and purpose. Both the public and the private lives of this “strange animal” are documented with the same mix of reverence and glee found in the exposés Bull-Dyke mocks. However, because we see the world through the eyes of the subject, this fictionalized history is filled with all the joy, pain and ambivalence each of us experiences.
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.
Irreverent homage to the city of my birth.
The life of photographer-writer Serge Emmanuel Jongué, told using his own talismans, images and texts.
In an Algeria divided between tradition and modernity, two young adults named Karim and Hadjer could not love each other free.
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.
In 2014 Lydia’s son, Colten Pratt, went missing off the streets of Winnipeg.
A Johannesburg neighourhood unites five people’s ambitions, desires, and struggles to survive over the course of a Friday.
An experimental documentary that explores the complicated process of decolonization and reveals how our memory and history are ingrained in our sense of identification.
A manuscript, written in 1954 to aid missionaries working among the Cree speaking natives of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, is the basis for this reflective narrative.
Dedicated to the artist’s father, this experimental tape begins sorting through identities contaminated by the generalized racism of white society and its degrading commercial exploitation of Native culture, i.e., “Indian” drums and doll souvenirs. Five young natives search for reconnection to their families, their stories, traditions and their role within community.
A look at how the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation was destroyed and displaced by water management policy.
Maiden Indian follows three women on a journey from the mall toward a deeper understanding of self.
When Marc Roger, a public reader, sets himself the challenge of walking from Saint-Malo, France, to Bamako, Mali, along with a donkey laden with books to be read aloud, filmmaker Catherine Hébert (The Other Side of the Country) joins him in Morocco, her camera rolling."
On a hill, a girl re-imagines her journey of survival. Spoken word and layered visuals create an intense urban tale of personal transformation.
A woman transforms into Louis Riel in an exploration of Métis identity.
The Spinning Woman decides she needs to further increase her social skills, and embarks on the task of becoming a better public speaker. This video begins to look at the more blatant excesses...
A woman recounts the humorous story of a friend's attempts to hide an excessive perspiration problem, which parallels her sexual re-orientation. Her bodily fluids are coming out before she does. This is the story of one woman's struggle with compulsory heterosexuality.
By working directly with the uncared for 'leftovers' of capitalist consumption, Hot Plastic Suits questions how human-centered and colonial systems of imagined limitlessness and replicability have encouraged fleeting affections with human and beyond human things.
Zuma explores the social construction of shadow mothers.
"The Way We Are" shares excerpts of stories from audio interviews with 4 queer Asian women living in Toronto: Katherine Chun, Wenda Li, Tamai Kobayashi, and Nancy Seto. Told in the present-tense, these stories are arranged in a way that explores the past as the present, and in doing so, immersing viewers into the real-lived experiences from a different generation.
Covenant explores the differences between traditional history and effective history in an attempt to reconcile an ancient biblical narrative.
This piece was created as a self-portrait using clothing as a means of talking about the body, discomfort and futility.
"Love on The Prairies" brings light to current-day homophobia in Saskatchewan, Canada. We have come far, but there's still a ways to go.
This video is available in French only. Use the Search or Explore site tools to select non-dialogue or English-language films and videos.
A moment of reflection, accompanied by an improvised piano sketch.
Shot in one take, two teen girls interact with a life-size bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi in shadow of the under-construction, controversial Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, Canada.
Transformed into a salmon, an Indigenous street artist travels through decayed urban landscapes to the forests of long ago, in this sublime mixed animation.