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.
She is a documentary journalist, film historian, and probable poet based in Calgary, with 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.
Mary 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.
She is an alum of multiple programs at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Gushul Residency in beautiful downtown Blairmore.
In 2015, Mary began a collaboration (the STONEY FILM PROJECT) with more than a dozen Stoney 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 an essay based on their work together, THE PLIGHT AND THE POWER OF THE STONEY NAKODA.
The STONEY FILM PROJECT continues today, and has expanded to include other First Nations.
A STUNNING BACKDROP was published in October of 2022 by Bighorn Books, the trade imprint of University of Calgary Press. It 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 historic filming locations ('movie landscapes') around the province as they appear today.
Mary is currently writing a second book, on film making in Alberta after 1960.
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