Black Beauty and Desire
JENNIFER HOLNESS IS A JOYFUL WOMAN.
Even speaking about colourism, media industry difficulties, and the realities of raising Black daughters in a white supremacist world, she always finds the joy in life, and the beauty in Blackness. Making her latest feature documentary Subjects of Desire was a natural extension of how she raised her own daughters to be consciously loving of the brown skin they were born in, despite the influence of the world around them.
“It was very important to me to get the film right,” she says in an interview prior to the Canadian launch of the film at Hot Docs. “To give the young people a voice, but also to raise my children where they were able to just glory in their Blackness.”
This intention permeates throughout , Holness’s return to directing after two decades. The film was produced by Hungry Eyes Media, the company she runs with her husband and creative partner, the director and screenwriter Sudz Sutherland.
