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A stunning backdrop : Alberta in the movies, 1917-1960
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue25734
- Medium
- Library - Book (including soft-cover and pamphlets)
- Published Date
- 2022
- Author
- Graham, Mary
- Publisher
- Calgary, AB : Bighorn Books, an imprint of University of Calgary Press
- Call Number
- 06.3 G76a
2 websites
- Author
- Graham, Mary
- Publisher
- Calgary, AB : Bighorn Books, an imprint of University of Calgary Press
- Published Date
- 2022
- Physical Description
- xi, 401 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 22 x 28 cm
- Abstract
- The unconventional, untold story of Alberta's film history, defined by the terrible beautify of its pristine landscape, surprisingly important to Hollywood, and recaptured in lost or ignored Indigenous perspectives and stories. Alberta's magnificent landscape has served as a popular location for filmmakers since the dawn of the movie industry. For film pioneers, Alberta embodied the myth of the Great Northwest, a primeval mountain wilderness and the last western frontier. In turn, Canadian entrepreneurs were eager for American studios to drape Alberta landscape across the backdrop of their movies, an advertisement without equal. A Stunning Backdrop is the untold story of six rollicking decades of filmmaking in Alberta. Mary Graham draws on twelve years of exhaustive research to reveal a film history like no other, illuminating the deep importance of the province to Hollywood. She explores the often friendly partnerships between American filmmakers and Indigenous communities, particularly the Stoney Nakoda, that provided economic opportunities and, in many cases, allowed them to retain religious and cultural practices banned by the Canadian government. Beautifully illustrated with archival photography and featuring century-old set stills alongside photographs of the locations as they appear today, by Jean Becq, Solomon Chiniquay, Jeff Wallace, George Webber, and Paul Zizka, A Stunning Backdrop is the fascinating, often surprising, always unconventional story of film in a province whose rugged, compelling, multifarious, terribly beautiful landscape continues to inspire filmmakers and audiences around the world.-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents
- Early Alberta movie landscapes today -- Into the (civilized) wilds -- Snow! snow! snow! -- A rabble rouser and a dreamer -- Father of the western -- In the shadow of Castle Mountain -- Royalty, great chiefs, ranches, and rodeos -- The joy girl and others of a gregarious nature -- Mountain men -- Building the railway, movie style -- War and propaganda -- Out of the coma -- Rodeo westerns of the atomic age -- Selling sex and nostalgia -- Making Rocky Mountain movie magic -- The power of revision -- List of movies made in Alberta, 1917-1960
- Notes
- Mary Graham received the Whyte Museum's Lillian Agnes Jones Fellowship, 2021-2022.
- ISBN
- 9781773853932
- Accession Number
- P2023.20
- Call Number
- 06.3 G76a
- Collection
- Archives Library
Websites
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