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This is a rough sketch of an article ultimately headed to go live on Wikipedia about Thaw, a festival of film, video and digital media based in Iowa City, IA from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s.

Thaw was conceived in 1996 to promote emerging, independent productions which challenge the conventional language of their media through innovation in both form and content.

History
The first festival was organized by Renee Sueppel, then a student of Intermedia, and by Lloyd Dunn, founder of the Iowa City-based, seminal collage sound collective, the Tape-Beatles. Thaw’s organizers hoped to enrich both the university and the local community by providing a venue for work which would otherwise not be available in the area. The festival gave Iowa’s student producers a chance to have their work shown and judged alongside exciting new productions from around the world.

In the following 6 years, the festival, under the direction of a small group of volunteers (including Miriam Bennett, Karen Koch, Atom Burke, Alison Latendresse, Jason Livingston, Caitlin Horsmon, Matthew Butler, Louis Schwartz, Ofer Eliaz and ????) developed the festival, maintaining Thaw's commitment to new media, innovative work and emerging makers, while bringing in jurors and works of national and international interest to an ever-expanding community of microcinemas and resurgent experimental venues such as Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, New York Underground Film Festival, Portland-based Peripheral Produce, and the Flicker network.

Kent Lambert, director of the 2000 festival, stated: "It's about the work, and if we find ways to make that work available to more people, then I'd say we've done a good job."

In 2007 (?), the Iowa City-based ICE festival began, citing Thaw as a source of inspiration.

Thaw 1998
Thaw 1998 brought Craig Baldwin, Mindy Faber, David Gatten, Vicki Honeyman (veteran Director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival), and Christiane Paul (now curator of new media at the Whitney Museum) as jurors.

Awards went to the following works: Menazh Square 1:20 PM / September 16, 1990 Moscow, USSR by Ken Kobland (digital); Host by Kristin Lucas (7 min. video); Circular Ruins by Julie Goldstein (6 min. film); Occularis: Eye Surrogates by Tran T. Kim-Trang (21 min. film); Measured Moments by Camille Seaman (19 min. video); Honorable Mentions: Wood Technology in the Design of Structures (or How To Live Happily Ever After) by Eric Henry (9 min. video); Levels of Undo by Sarah Smiley (2 min. video); Bird Watching by Chelsea Walton (3 min. film); 24 Selected Stops in 25 Segments by Sean Regan (9 min. video); In The File by Tom Comerford (8 min. film); Almanac by John Scott (9 min. film).

Thaw 1999
Thaw 1999 brought Tennessee Rice Dixon, Anne McGuire and Thad Povey to judge the exhibited works.

1999 Award winners: Tabernacle by Tony Gault (film, 10 minutes); Emily Died (Reel 80 of Five Year Diary) by Anne Robertson (video, 27 minutes); notes before the revolution by Ip Yuk-Yiu (film, 16 minutes); and http://www.rtmark.com by rtmark.

Audience Award Winner: Saddle Sores by Vanalyne Green (video, 20 minutes).

Honorable Mention: A Fragmentary History of the 21st Century by Roger Beebe(film, 18 minutes)

Thaw 2000
Thaw 2000, under the direction of Kent Lambert, included a retrospective of work by Franklin Miller and a performance by The Tape-beatles. Thaw 2000 brought Brian Frye, Kathy High and Norie Neumark to judge the exhibited works.

"It's about the work, and if we find ways to make that work available to more people, then I'd say we've done a good job." Kent Lambert, footnote to Afterimage article

Thaw 2001
Thaw 2001 brought Rich and Jim of Animal Charm, Deborah Stratman and Jim Trainor to judge the exhibited works.

Thaw 2001 was also notable for its commitment to expanded exhibition forms, including a performance by Animal Charm at a local bowling alley, and an overall theme of Four Square. Thaw attracted controversy when, during the opening night of the festival, participants were invited to play Four Square on the museum gallery floors, and, most notoriously, Habeas Corpus, an Intermedia affinity group in Iowa City, put on a performance event titled "Naked Camera Toss." The performance, quite literal in execution, involved tossing around camcorders amongst a moving group of naked people, and generating live video feeds for display and later use. The controversy stemmed from the presence of small children in the room, and caught the media attention of both local network affiliates and national publications. (this last bit can be footnoted to the Chronicle article, found here: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i30/30a01001.htm).

The Audience Choice award $200 split between three artists: Johanna Hibbard for "Three Kisses," The Bureau of Inverse Technology for "Bit Plane," and Jennet Thomas for "Sharony!"

The New Pioneer Co-op award for Outstanding Iowa Artist $75 Nuria Sheehan for "Wunderkind"

3 Best of Festival Awards $250 each Irene Gustafson & Julia Zay for "Screen Test No. 1, No. 2, No. 3" Jennet Thomas for "Sharony!" The Bureau of Inverse Technology for "Bit Plane"

Best Website $125 Heath Bunting for www.irational.org/heath/ccnow

Feel Good Movie of the Year $125 Donigan Cumming for "if only I"

Tough Love Award $125 Joe Gibbons for "Final Exit"

Animal Charm Award $125 Kent Lambert for "Ken Burns Give You Something"

Stratman/Trainor Award $125 Miranda July for "Nest of Tens"

Lifetime Achievement Award $125 Ticia Kane for "Shadow in the Room"

Link to U Iowa's press release for Thaw 2001 http://www.news-releases.uiowa.edu/2001/march/0320thawfestival.html

Thaw 2003
Thaw's final year.

Iowa City

University of Iowa

Key People
Lloyd Dunn

Kent Lambert

Miriam Bennett

Matthew Butler

Alison Latendresse

Jason Livingston

Caitlin Horsmon

Atom Burke

Russ Nordman