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Welcome To The Tibeca Film Festival's Family Fest!

The Tibeca Film Festival has been a household name for years thanks to new Yorkers and celebs alike. The success of this festival has led to the creation of several smaller festivals run by the same people who run the TFF. One of these festivals occurred this past Saturday April 30th 2011 and it stretched along Greenwich Street from Chambers street up to Hubert street. The festival was a combination of children's festival and family sports festival. Kids had access to several booths featuring family friendly games, face painting and coloring in pre-drawn artwork. A lot of kid friendly, soon to be released movie such as the Smurfs, had booths set up to give away merchandise like temporary tattoo's, bookmarks and postcards. There were free film screenings at BMCC College on Chambers street; a BMX stunt show and a lot of dancing kids on stage.

The environment was also a big crowd seller as Earth day was the previous weekend, a lot of booths promoted wind energy and other 'green' ideas in hopes the kids would understand just how important this planet is to all of us and what we can do to help. Of course whenever you hear the words 'street fair' you automatically think of food and there was plenty of it at this festival. Glaceau gave away free bottles of low calorie vitamin water while the TFF booth gave away free bags of popcorn. Almost every restaurant from Billy's Bakery to Stuzzicheria had a warming station outside on the sidewalks where small plates of food were sold. There were even some local residents who set up some side walks shows with baked goods and home cooked food to sell with proceeds going to the local kid's sports teams.

And speaking of sports, there was also an entire section towards Hubert Street that was devoted to the NY sports teams in an effort to keep our NYC kids in shape. The NY Rangers set up a mini floor rink where kids could practice their slap shots; the Knicks had a mini basketball court set up, our WNBA team and Soccer team had inflatable playpens set up for kids to explore. A few ex NY Knicks came to show their support of this event as well though I wasn't there when they arrived, I had heard about it later.

On every block of the festival there was a main stage set up and performances ran usually by the hour. They had some great dancing contests for the kids to win tickets for a Broadway musical; there was yoga for kid's demonstration, story time for those kids that didn't want to participant in the sports games just yet. This festival featured the best of the best when it came to event planning. Everyone had an amazing time, young and old alike.