Talking to Ray Balberan is like watching the History channel, if it were focused on the Mission District. Having a conversation with him is not only refreshing, but inspiring.

At 82, Balberan is still dedicated to keeping the neighborhood’s history accessible People might not guess that he started out working on a tugboat in the Bay, where he witnessed the U.S. Navy prepare for the war against Vietnam. Balberan became a filmmaker when, along with his friend Ray Rivera and others, he helped found Mission Film Workshop with a $5,000 grant from San Francisco State University. The grant was awarded at a time when students were demanding the institution of an ethnic studies program at the school.

Rivera and Balberan embarked on a journey to develop a community-based training program for youth who had never seen themselves or their lives represented on film. That workshop eventually became Mission Mediarts, and the organization was able to get a weekly half-hour show on KQED called “Mission and 24th Streets”.

“One of the biggest advantages of connecting with KQED was access to engineers and equipment,” Balberan said. “With these tools, we began to train youth from the Mission, Fillmore [where he lives] and Chinatown, and [we were] also focused on young women like [those from community groups] Mujeres de Atzlan and Mujeres Muratistas.”

Watching films made by young students and artists, according to Balberan, is an invigorating and hopeful experience. Their strength and beauty can fill your heart with joy.

KQED

Mediarts covered critical issues including redevelopment, child labor and the struggles of the United Farm Workers. But soon, Balberan says, KQED moved to censor its content.

“Can you imagine that KQED wanted to censor issues about the Farm Workers union?” said Balberan in an outraged tone. He said the Nixon administration had threatened to cut Public Broadcasting Station funding if its productions were critical of the government.

Although KQED cancelled the Mission Mediarts show in 1973, the organization continued giving voice to African Americans, Asians, Latin and LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as the agencies that supported their communities, like the Mission Neighborhood Centers, cultural centers and the Mission Coalition Organization.

Balberan also worked closely with Mission Mental Health as the clinic’s education coordinator. He stayed a strong advocate for community history and made several films including 1971’s The Family and 1972’s Back on the Streets .

“Just as El Tecolote was our community’s journalistic voice, we were doing the same with film,” he said. “We were able to get our films on PBS.”

Balberan added: “We have so much history that no one else filmed. We never stopped. Back then, we sent students to the Board of Supervisors meetings and recorded the Mission community speaking up for their rights.” The meetings were then aired on community access cable stations. “And of course, we filmed all the demonstrations,” he said.

According to Balberan, there were also the lowriders, who faced intense police repression in the 1980s. “The lowriders’ activism resulted in the community’s demand to create La Raza Park on Potrero,” he said.

During that time, he also worked with Real Alternatives Program, and became a leader in youth rights, violence prevention and mental health services.

“History is about the people, real people, those that are concerned about the community and who are principled and work for community controlled services — programs like Instituto Familiar de la Raza, or the Indigenous Cultural Center,” Balberan said.

Balberan is now at the beginning of his eighth decade, and still living in his childhood neighborhood, the Fillmore, with his wife. He has faced health issues and now uses a pacemaker.


Archive

After 20 years at RAP, Balberan retired, but he never lost his focus on youth rights. In 2002, he met filmmaker Debra Koffler who was the co-founder of Conscious Youth Media Crew. The two helped create the Ray Balberan Mission Mediarts Archive Collective along with Vero Majano, a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in the Mission, and Loriz “Ginger” Godines, a Bay Area filmmaker. Others who have served as filmmakers for the archive are Ana Montano and Calvin Roberts.

In 1921, co-founder Rivera died, but Balberan has worked hard to continue the dream.

“The work now is to bring in new people who can advise and ultimately carry on the work. We want to get this history out there and make our films public in the near future,” he said. “But we need equipment, insurance, technical support and more. All our supporters have jobs to survive. No one is sitting on a pot of gold.”

In 2024, RBMMA connected with Rick Prelinger and his Prelinger Archive, who generously offered to digitize Balberan’s collection of 16mm films shot by Mission Mediarts crew members in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Prelinger had a grant from FileCoin Foundation to digitize community-based archives on the condition that they be shared publicly on the Internet Archive website. This digitization work was done for free and otherwise would have cost Mission Mediarts tens of thousands of dollars or more.

The films will also soon be available to view on the dedicated Ray Balberan Mission Mediarts Archive website at www.rbmma.org. Balberan’s films should be available to view on the Internet Internet Archive platform by the end of the year.

“The archives are a critical part of our history,” Balberan said. “The poets, muralists, activists, all the artists, families, they are all in the archives. Some people think that because we can post anything on the internet, we don’t need real news. But who owns and controls that media? We don’t. An important part of democratizing media is having our history accessible. It’s a part of our First Amendment right.” To date, according to Balberan, the total collection, produced over 50-plus years of documenting the Mission, is comprised of 260 16mm films and 300 video films.

Balberan said 600 to 1,000 people have watched the account’s YouTube videos and that according to channel analytics, in 2025 Mission Mediarts Archives received 41,142 views.

“And to think, this all started with a community-based youth media training program made up of working-class Indigenous, Latinx, African American and Asian Pacific Islander students to document the people’s history,” reflected Balberan.

That journey continues, thanks to Ray Balberan, Ray Rivera and Mission Mediarts.