Rada Priya

There are films you enjoy, films you admire, and then films that bypass your intellect entirely and go straight for the nervous system.  Strange Darling   did that to me. I didn’t just watch it - I felt located by it. From the title alone, the film announces its intelligence.  Strange Darling  sounds intimate and threatening in the same breath, and the opening scene honours that tension immediately. The colour blocking is not aesthetic flourish but psychological architecture. The cinematography is precise, deliberate, almost mannered - yet constantly vibrating with danger.  The chemistry between the leads is undeniable and unsettling. Not romantic, not safe - a charge that feels ferocious without tipping into fantasy. They are both extraordinarily talented and undeniably hot, which matters because attraction interferes with moral clarity. The film understands that beauty disarms suspicion and uses it without apology. Watching them together is confronting, hypnot...

I’ve already written about  The Wiiyaan   as a journalist. That piece lives in the Tweed Weekly . It’s careful, respectful, measured. It honours Bundjalung origin story, place, and the quiet authority of listening. It was written for a broad audience, many of whom - like me - come from settler families, carrying our own histories alongside the land we now call home. But after filing that story, I knew I wasn’t done. Some stories ask something back from you. This one did. So this is the version that doesn’t fit in a newspaper column. This is the version that explains why that exhibition cracked something open in me - why listening to Kyle Slabb speak about holding  one  version of Country, with care and restraint, felt like a mirror I wasn’t expecting. Kyle spoke about perspective. About how this telling is not  the  story, but  a  story - shaped by lineage, responsibility and law. He was clear, careful, and deeply respectful of other versions held...

Edwina Johnson had never photographed fashion before, and that openness - her willingness to learn, to ask, to absorb advice from fellow students and teachers-gave this shoot its own kind of magic. No ego, no pressure, just the curiosity of someone discovering a new craft in real time. Dean James guided us with both technical clarity and stylistic direction, helping shape the light, angles and mood so Edwina could explore freely. A beautiful documentation of my designs: