Mary Graham is the award-winning author of A STUNNING BACKDROP: ALBERTA IN THE MOVIES, 1917-1960, the 2023 Alberta Book Publishers 'Regional Book of the Year' and recipient of the 2022 PUBWEST Bronze Medal for Cover Design. It was also nominated for Alberta Book Publishers Trade Nonfiction Book of 2023. Mary is a documentary journalist and film historian, and often appears as a feature film specialist on media venues such as ARTE (the European Culture Channel), CBC RADIO, GLOBAL TV, POSTMEDIA NETWORK, NATIONAL POST, OTTAWA CITIZEN, CALGARY HERALD and ALBERTA VIEWS.
In 2015, she began a collaboration (the STONEY FILM PROJECT) with more than a dozen Iyarhe Nakoda Elders from Mini'Thni (Morley) to recapture a century of their unrecognized contributions and establish the historic importance of Indigenous nations to film making in Alberta through ongoing communal film screenings and discussions on the reserve. She was nominated for an Alberta Literary Award for her essay, THE PLIGHT AND THE POWER OF THE STONEY NAKODA. A feature-length documentary based on her work with the Elders came out in 2024.
A STUNNING BACKDROP is the unconventional, untold story of Alberta’s film history, defined by the terrible beauty of its pristine landscape, surprisingly important to Hollywood, and recaptured in lost or ignored Indigenous perspectives and stories, with more than 150 film set stills and archival photos of moviemaking from the first half of the 20th century and 40 original photos of filming locations ('movie landscapes') - some as old as a century - around the province as they appear today. The book establishes the importance of Indigenous nations to filmmaking in Alberta, changes our ideas of the early western genre and chronicles why so many auteurs of the first half of the 20th century- Ford, Walsh, Mann, Ince, Borzage etc - came to Alberta to make revision and anti-racism westerns.
A second book on filmmaking in Alberta after 1960 is underway, with Malick, Penn, Altman, Eastwood, Nolan, Dominik, Costner, Kubrick, Lean, Inarritu etc. The STONEY FILM PROJECT continues today, and has expanded to include other First Nations. Another film based on A STUNNING BACKDROP and the follow up book is in the works.
Mary has an Arts degree in Twentieth Century Thought (Philosophy, History and Literature) from the University of New Brunswick, a graduate degree in Journalism from the University of Kings College and a Master of Marine Affairs from the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. She is an alum of multiple programs at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Gushul Residency in beautiful downtown Blairmore.
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