''It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood'' is a 1974

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

about poet

Frank Stanford Frank Stanford (born Francis Gildart Smith; August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was an American poet. He is most known for his epic, ''The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You'' – a labyrinthine poem without stanzas or punctuation. In a ...

, made by Stanford and his publisher, Irv Broughton.Bachar, Greg
"It Wasn't A Dream, It Was A Flood: Constant Stranger"
, Rain Taxi, Vol. 3, No. 3. Fall 1998. Stanford appears charismatic and passionate in the 25-minute film, which interviews friends on whom Stanford's literary characters were sometimes based. The film won one of the Judge's Awards at the 1975 Northwest Film & Video Festival.Ted Hurliman at the

Northwest Film Center PAM CUT–Center for an Untold Tomorrow, formerly the ''Northwest Film Center'' is a Pacific Northwest, regional media arts resource and service organization based in Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, United States that was founded to encourage t ...

(which runs the Northwest Film & Video Festival) in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

by phone on February 21, 2008. Accessing records, Hurliman confirmed that the film screened at the 1975 festival (as opposed to the commonly misprinted "1974"), that the film was 25 minutes on 16 mm, that the director was listed as Irv Brougton, that the description was "A dreamlike documentary about poet Frank Stanford, filmed in Arkansas and Mississippi," and that the film won "one of the Judge's Awards." Irv Broughton in

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada ...

by phone on February 18, 2008, clarifying: the festival was the Northwest Film & Video Festival, not the West Coast Film Festival (as some sources have misprinted), and the award was not for "experimental filmmaking," as Rain Taxi reported. It has never been released in theaters or on

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

. The film was screened on July 26, 1997 at Vox Anima Artspace and October 18, 2008 at the Frank Stanford Literary Festival, both in

Fayetteville, Arkansas Fayetteville () is the second-largest city in Arkansas, the county seat of Washington County, and the biggest city in Northwest Arkansas. The city is on the outskirts of the Boston Mountains, deep within the Ozarks. Known as Washington until ...

References

1974 short films 1970s short documentary films Autobiographical documentary films 1974 documentary films 1974 films Documentary films about poets American short documentary films 1970s American films {{bio-documentary-film-stub