A film festival in San Clemente will put a spotlight on women surfers, highlighting challenges the wave riders faced through the decades, as well as how they are shaping the future of the sport.

The San Clemente Women’s Surf Film Festival, which this year includes a daytime Sandy Sip and Shop arts and crafts fair, is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 21, at the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center.

Ticket sales to see the three films starting at 3 p.m., “Girls Can’t Surf,” “Stoke Chasers” and “The Physics of Noseriding,” will benefit Sandy Feet Initiative, a nonprofit that helps siblings of children with special needs, recognizing they too need a support system.

Also: While separate from the film festival, the center just launched an “Under the Radar” exhibit that is also about female surfers, highlighting some of the unsung heroes who made waves in surfing, but didn’t get due credit.

Mo Langley, founder of Sandy Feet Initiative and the festival, now in its fourth year, said she hopes to repeat last year’s sold-out crowds.

With only one other surf film festival dedicated to women held in New York, Langley said she knew there was a void for the important stories to be told and saw it as a good way to gather like-minded people together who wanted to help the nonprofit, which in recent years has expanded from San Clemente to Huntington Beach and San Diego, in part because of funds raised at the festival.

“We just grow it every year,” she said, with the addition of the arts and crafts fair last year. “Women are so unrecognized in the surf film industry. All of our films are written or produced by women … and I think there are a lot of women out there doing great things with the love of the ocean.”

Jo Anna Edmison, creator of the short films “Stoke Chasers” and “Freedom of Flow,” talked about how she fell in love with film making while growing up in the South Bay and attending Palos Verdes High School.

She remembers days filming at Torrance Beach and the skatepark in Manhattan Beach.

“I hung out with all the guys who surfed,” said Edmison, who first starting filming at age 15. “I would be kind of the only girl hanging out with them, for the most part. I started documenting anything around me.”

The thing that attracted her most to skating and surfing was how stoked people were while doing it.

“It’s like this obsession – but a healthy obsession,” said the now 23-year-old. “It’s not only that, but the community that comes with it. It’s such a tight-knit community that stretches across the world. It connects so many like-minded people.”

Growing up as a dancer, she always appreciated the way the body moves to create motion, she said. She saw similarities in surfing and skating – at times fast paced and intense, other times flowing and graceful.

“I think the movements of surfing and skating and using the board to create these motions was always very intriguing to me, because it’s kind of like a dance,” Edmison said.

Her camera of choice is an old-school 16 mm camera, like Bruce Brown used in the “Endless Summer” films, giving a “nostalgic and hopefully timeless” feel.

When she went up to San Luis Obispo for college, Edmison said she started wondering why she was focusing just on the guys.

“I was on a hunt to find all the girls who did it too, just to try and connect those communities,” she said. “I found a lot of super awesome girls I connected with.”

She said she found the groups of girls had the same obsession as the male surfers and skaters she grew up with, a growing community of females pushing boundaries.

Filmmaker Lauren Hill created “The Physics of Noseriding,” to be featured at the San Clemente Women’s Film Festival on Jan. 21. (Photo courtesy of Hill)

She filmed from 2017 through 2019 before the film came out in 2020. Given pandemic restrictions, this will be her first in-person showing.

She hopes, she said, films like hers can make an imprint on younger girl surfers and skaters who will be inspired to start at a younger age.

“I think I would tell a younger girl to go for it, to get stoked on it and stick with it,” Edmison said. “Just like anything else you want to be good at what makes you happy.”

San Clemente twins Jolene and Jorja Smith were featured in the Australian documentary that is being shown, “Girls Can’t Surf,” written by Julie-Anne De Ruvo and released in 2020. It follows a group of barrier-breaking women in the ’80s and ’90s. The twins will be part of a Q&A session after the screening.

Much has changed since she and her sister were on the World Tour from 1985 through 1991, with women now receiving equal prize money as men.

While her generation had many trail blazers, today’s women surfers are making great strides in the surf, as well, Jolene Smith said. “It just seems like the women are just charging so much more, pushing themselves harder.”

If you go

When: The arts and crafts fair from noon to 3 p.m. will features 15 to 20 local women artists and is free. The film screenings start at 3 p.m.

Where: Surfing Heritage and Culture Center, 110 Calle Iglesia, San Clemente

Cost: Tickets to see all three films are $40 adults or $25 for kids.

More information: sandyfeetoc.org.