Les McLaren
2021Cowboy and Maria in Town
Les McLaren, Annie Stiven
Exploring individual responses to rapid social change, Cowboy and Maria in town follows the parallel lives of its two central characters. Cowboy and Maria have independently landed in Port Moresby, negotiating ways to survive urban life in a city ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world. Cowboy is an ex-raskol (urban bandit) and Maria an inhabitant of a squatter settlement. Unemployed and with a jail record, Cowboy has constructed an electric guitar out of scrap materials and plays on street corners. Maria lives an equally precarious existence, cultivating a seasonal garden in an urban settlement inflamed by frustration and intertribal conflicts. Far from being third world victims, they go about their daily lives with humour and imagination, rising to the challenge of enormous cultural upheaval.
Cowboy and Maria in Town
Life is a Very Strange Thing
Les McLaren, Annie Stiven
Frédéric has been many things: a young rebel in Paris, ethnomusicologist, executive of a multinational garbage business. After decades living abroad he returns to a France that is familiar but on edge, reeling from terrorist attacks and a powerful resurgence of nationalist politics. Life is a very strange thing is a compelling and personal reflection on past events that shape the present.
Life is a Very Strange Thing
