Do Your Thing
1973 · 29m · Canada
Genres: documentary
Tones: tender, theatrical
Public housing tenants take the stage at Ottawa's National Arts Centre for the finals of their own talent contest. Behind-the-scenes organizing gives way to performances in a venue most of the contestants are entering for the first time.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 1973 doc about public housing residents doing a talent show sounds like the most establishment-friendly film imaginable—and yet there's something genuinely subversive about letting these people *be* on a stage meant for professionals, no irony, no exploitation angle, just theater.
The film's restraint is its sophistication: it honors the theatrical tradition by treating a community talent contest with the formal gravity of a premiere, situating joy and dignity within institutional space rather than against it.
What makes this work is the decision to linger behind the curtain—the organizing, the nerves, the small conversations—before letting the performances breathe, so by the time anyone takes that stage, you're already invested in their specific, unglamorous courage.