For all the peeps in San Francisco, the 2009 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival kicks off today. channelAPA.com sat down with festival director Chi-hui Yang to learn what’s hot at the film festival.

Watch some film from Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. His latest film is Tokyo Sonata, which is coming soon to theaters. There’s a double feature at the Castro Theater on Friday, March 13, 2009. (That’s two flicks for the price of one in these hard economic times.)

What’s better than cheap is FREE!! Saturday, March 14, 2009 is the return of Festival Forum, a day-long fair of in the Japantown Peace Plaza. The Festival Forum will feature a Japanese-American bluegrass guitarist, a Brazilian drum ensemble, rock bands and breakdancers performing live on stage, and more. Here’s some of the people that will be there: Eth-noh-tec: Asian American Kinetic Story Performance, Jane Lui, Toshio Hirano, Sambasia, Goh Nakamura, Cast of Thousands, MUD, Dance Performance by Hung Dynasty. Of course the winners of the 2nd annual DIY Music Video Contest will have there videos shown there. Finally, a Free Outdoor Screening of Hitoshi Matsumoto’s BIG MAN JAPAN (Dainipponjin, Japan, 2007) at 8pm. Can you believe it all this is FREE? Action takes place from 12:00 – 9:30pm.

Other screenings we recommend are Children of Invention, White on Rice, Dirty Hands, The Forgotten Woman, You Don’t Know Jack: the Jack Soo Story, The Chaser, Is It Worth It? Lemme Work It, Mixtape 4 the MSG Addict. Some are sold out and there’s too many to list. You can learn more and buy tickets here.