Tomorrow marks the opening of the tenth annual New York International Children's Film Festival, which runs through March 16 and spreads its bounty across four venues: IFC Center, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) theater, Symphony Space, and the Cantor Film Center. The festival was launched a decade ago by Eric Beckman and Emily Shapiro, who immediately discovered that they faced an uphill battle from those who associate the term "children's film" with "inoffensive pap." It's a measure of just how ingrained that idea has become that the festival founders had to address it even in their discussions with filmmakers who were reluctant to have their films shown, lest they become tainted with the dread "family friendly" label. As Beckman told S. James Snyder in an interview for the New York Sun, "Over and over, I found myself talking to filmmakers who reacted along the lines of 'I'm not sure this is a movie for children.' And I just started to become this broken record: 'Don't judge it through the lens of whether this will be nice for children. If it's a great film, then it's a great film for all age groups.'"
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