The scenes were shot on Orkney

Colin Kirkpatrick's The Cowboy and The Spaceman is being screened at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre on North Uist until 27 May.

It is based on US economist Kenneth Boulding's essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth.

Two years in the making, scenes for the film were shot on Orkney.

Its screening at Taigh Chearsabhagh is accompanied by an exhibition of photographs, prints and paintings.

Adam Proctor, of Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, filmed and edited the 21-minute piece.

He hopes to have the film screened in the Central Belt and is also targeting international festivals, including those in Japan and US.

Mr Kirkpatrick, from Orkney, said he was introduced to social scientist Mr Boulding's 1966 essay by his friend Dr Sandy Kerr of Heriott Watt University's Stromness campus.

He said: "Kenneth Boulding identified two emerging systems for the world's economies and referred to them as the cowboy economy and the spaceman economy.

Colin Kirkpatrick in the role of the cowboy who loses his horse

"The cowboy economy looks out on the world as an endless horizon of possibilities.

"If he rides into a town and gets into trouble, or ruins the prairie, then he just moves on to the next cow town or prairie.

"With the spaceman economy, he travels through space in a spaceship and has to recycle its finite resources to ensure the survival of the ship's occupants."

In his film, Mr Kirkpatrick plays both the roles of the cowboy, who has lost his horse, and the spaceman, who has splashed down off Orkney and paddles ashore in search of civilisation.

Willie Ermine, assistant professor with the First Nations University of Canada, narrates the film in native Cree. There are English subtitles.

Orkney has strong connections to Canada's first nation people through Orcadian recruitment to the Hudson Bay Company.

The film has original music by Scottish musician and artist Ziggy Campbell and Orkney composer James Gray.

It finishes with a track by the late Shetland musician and lobster fisherman, Thomas Fraser, a fan of Jimmy Rodgers' Country and Western music.

John Wayne

Visual artist Mr Kirkpatrick, who also works for a wholesale suppliers, hopes to go on to document Scottish islanders' fascination with the Wild West.

He said growing up on Orkney, he noticed locals mimicked the distinctive walks of Hollywood cowboys played the likes of Robert Mitchum and John Wayne.

Mr Kirkpatrick said: "Local fishermen after a hard week at sea would don cowboy boots and hit the local bars like cowboys in cow town after the cattle drive."

He added: "You would see lads echo the cowboy swagger down the Saturday night street, or across a dance floor.