Women’s sports have never been more popular than today, and the future looks high-wattage bright.

The Bay Area is about to add new professional teams in the National Women’s Soccer League and WNBA, and national TV ratings for those leagues as well as the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament and U.S. women’s national soccer team continually set new records. Meanwhile in Europe, some women’s soccer matches recently have drawn more than 90,000 fans.

But clearly there arechallenges that remain. Last year, the U.S. women’s team finally achieved anequal pay agreementafter years of struggle and litigation, and nowother international teamsare using its success as a blueprint. In August, the Spanish women’s soccer team won its first Women’s World Cup title, but their celebrationwas marred by a harassment scandalthat eventually cost the team’s coach and general manager — both men — their jobs.

“We were shocked, but not surprised,” said Rachel Ramsay, co-director of “Copa ’71,” a remarkable film about a forgotten Women’s World Cup that is the centerpiece selection ofSFFilm’s Doc Storiesat 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco. “These are the same themes that we have throughout our film. These are things that haven’t gone away. They’re all there, whether that’s in our film or on the pitch today.”

Doc Stories,SFFilm’s annual documentary festival, runs Thursday, Nov. 2, through Sunday, Nov. 5 at the Vogue as well as the Premier Theatre in the Presidio, with an online component to follow on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 6-7. The festival, which traditionally features several films thought to be in contention during awards season, opens with a pair of music-themed documentaries, “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and “American Symphony,” a compelling portrait of Louisiana composer and musicianJon Batiste;和关闭with “Anselm,” a 3D movie about German painter and sculptorAnselm Kieferdirected by another German master,Wim Wenders.

“Copa ’71” is an excellent choice as the centerpiece of the festival, as it thinks globally and hits locally. It’s about a rogue, six-team Women’s World Cup in Mexico 20 years before the first official FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991. Appearing in the documentary is San Jose native and two-time World Cup championBrandi Chastain湾FC的合伙人,the new NWSL teamthat begins play in 2024. Ramsay and James Erskine filmed scenes at Chastain’s alma mater, Santa Clara University. Cal alumAlex Morgan, a U.S. national team star who also is an executive producer of the film along withSerena and Venus Williams, makes a cameo too.

But neither Chastain nor Morgan had even heard of the ’71 Cup before getting involved with the doc.

“This is unbelievable,” Chastain says in the film when she was shown footage from the event for the first time. “Why didn’t I know about this? It makes me very happy, and it infuriates me, to be honest with you.”

半个世纪以前,在许多计谋足球联合会ntries did not sanction the women’s game, following the lead of FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cups. But independent club leagues and national teams were formed nevertheless, including an organization called the Federation of Independent European Female Football.

FIEFF operated outside of the mainstream and decided to hold a World Cup in Mexico. Four European teams — England, Denmark, Italy and France — qualified, along with Mexico and Argentina. FIFA, meanwhile, forbade use of stadiums it sanctioned, which was basically every stadium in Mexico except for two of the largest: the massive Azteca Stadium in Mexico City built for the 1968 Olympics with a capacity of 110,000, and the 56,000-seat Jalisco Stadium in Guadalajara.

To fill the seats, organizers convinced Mexican media to promote the Cup with an all-out blitz, with feature stories, TV appearances and fan contests. The media campaign played up the sex appeal angle (young women in shorts!), but true soccer fans packed the stadiums. Azteca topped 100,000 twice, building from the 80,000 that attended the opening match.

Then the tournament ended, and all was forgotten. Players returned to their hometowns, and many never played a meaningful match again. Title winner Denmark’s accomplishment was not even acknowledged by the Danish Football Federation.

“It was a contact sport,” Erskine said. “The men who made the rules didn’t want women to play contact sports. They wanted to reserve those spaces for themselves.”

Ramsay said the establishment’s fear at the time was that any popular success the women might have would draw attention away from the men’s game. And a ban on women participating particularly denied opportunities to working-class women.

“You don’t need money to play football; it’s a very working-class sport,” she said. “The women’s sports that were allowed were golf, tennis, swimming — sports where you needed money to play in a guarded and private space. Soccer was out on the street. So the women affected by a ban on football were overwhelmingly those who have less of a voice in society anyway.”

It’s hard to say which is more affecting in “Copa ’71,” the rich game footage and behind-the-scenes photos from a half-century ago, or the moving stories told by the former players Ramsay and Erskine found, many of them now in their 70s, having lived full but football-free lives.

With women’s sports gaining momentum today, it’s worth pausing to spend time with these pioneers, forgotten no longer.

Reach G. Allen Johnson:ajohnson@sfchronicle.com