The San Diego Girl Film Festival’s mission statement seems modest enough: empower young women through positive film media and promote women filmmakers and their films.

As it turns out, that’s a pretty ambitious task that involves no less than changing the way women are represented in the media.

This year’s festival, which takes place from 12:00 noon to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 18, at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, presents 12 shorts, features and documentaries, a filmmaker luncheon and panel discussion.

Now in its second year, the festival screens films by women about women. It’s a niche festival with a target market that, though small, is slowly growing. A Directors Guild of America report published in 1997 showed that women represented just 12.2 percent of total membership. That number is up to 22 percent as of last year, with 13 percent of women in directorial roles, said Renee Herrell, founder and executive director of the San Diego Girl Film Festival.

“There is a very small percentage of women in the film industry – which is a very technical industry – not to mention very few women actually in a leadership role” as director, said Herrell. “So doing the film festival allows more women to have their films shown, and since we only show films by women, it’s completely devoted to them.”

The local and national directors featured in the festival range from high school age into their 60s, said Herrell, who didn’t want to limit the festival to just professional filmmakers. Thematically, the only commonality of the films is a positive and realistic representation of women. The festival’s screening panel chose films with women-centric themes that portray women as they really are, said Herrell, instead of the glamorized, sometimes ornamental way they are often presented in Hollywood.

“Most independent women filmmakers are trying to make a statement with their films; they’re trying to affect the role and representation of women in society,” she said. “We felt with the film festival … we’d be able to get positive media out there, as opposed to the negative media that we see – in the sense that it portrays women in maybe only one role: she’s white, she’s blonde, she’s curvy, she’s thin.” A more realistic view of women, Herrell said, is inclusive of different ethnicities, diverse cultures, various body types and all walks of life.

Herrell cited as an example the festival’s feature film, Beauteous: The Trilogy, by Giovanna Chesler. The three shorts that comprise the trilogy are portraits of the artist and her two sisters. The film examines how the sisters relate to the notion of beauty, and touches on the way women wrestle with body image and how that affects their sense of self.

One piece of the trilogy is a documentary about Stephanie, who was born with a cleft lip and palate. The film documents the 30 surgeries Stephanie went through to transform her face and correct this “defect.”

The second story is Chesler’s own, a short black and white experimental narrative that reveals the artist’s perceptions of self, both grotesque and beautiful. The third piece is the fictionalized story of a Long Island prom queen who discovers a part of herself in her own desire for a female classmate, “shattering people’s conceptions of what the beautiful girl is supposed to be,” said the filmmaker.

This last piece has been screened individually at various gay and lesbian film festivals throughout the nation (including San Diego’s Outfest last year), but Chesler said the film about prom queen Donatella is much more than a coming-out story.

“Donatella is also developing writing skills, becoming a poet, at the same time of her coming out,” Chesler said. “She’s exploring her intellectual, creative side, finding a new language to express her experiences. There’s more going on to her coming out than being solely sexual – it’s more holistic, involving many parts of a person’s life and identity.”

This exploration of identity, creativity and expression is what makes the San Diego Girl Film Festival so important, said Chesler, who’s an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego in the communications department. It’s also a chance for her to give back to the film community.

“It’s more interesting to me to involve myself in the community of San Diego outside of the university. It’s another opportunity to speak to young girls as a filmmaker,” she said. “I definitely didn’t have women I could speak with as artists or working in film or video. And I definitely didn’t have access to the tools to make my work.”

Chesler will participate in the filmmaker luncheon and chair the festival’s panel on women in film.

The festival kicks off with lunch at the Time Out Café in the Hall of Champions at Balboa Park. The luncheon features eight directors in a free format, intimate setting.

“If you’re interested in being a filmmaker or you’ve always wanted to know what do filmmakers think or how did they get started, it’s just a chance for you to sit and pick the filmmaker’s brains,” said Herrell. “It’s a great chance for young filmmakers to ask seasoned filmmakers, ‘How did you do it, and how can I do it?’”

A panel discussion will follow the luncheon, at 2:00 p.m. The discussion will focus on the representation of women in the media; the paths panel members took to success; and give advice to young women getting started in the film industry. Panel members include Chesler, Dr. Davia Kakaiya, executive director of Healthy Within, and Tina Huagn, student filmmaker and graduate of Reel Grrls, a training program that empowers young women to critique media images and gain media technology skills.

About 60 people attended the premiere San Diego Girl Film Festival last year, said Herrell, who expects more than 100 to turn out this year. The San Diego Women Film Foundation produces the festival on a shoestring budget of a couple thousand dollars. Still, Herrell and the foundation have high aspirations for the festival: Next year she hopes to secure corporate sponsors and two theaters for a possible two-day festival.

“It’s more exposure and it increases our ability to be able to get more San Diegans involved with independent film, and maybe really influence young women filmmakers who are just getting started,” Herrell said. “This gives them an opportunity to meet a filmmaker and learn more about their profession and how to get their film out there.”