OFF BOARD VICE-PRESIDENT
FOUNDER & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Steve Grumette is a graduate of UCLA, from which he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Physics. After spending two years working in the aerospace industry, he returned to the UCLA motion picture department to study filmmaking.
Steve has worked in the motion picture industry for more than forty years as director, cameraman and editor. His collaborative project, The Magic Machines, won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for “Best Live Action Short Subject.” His other films have won numerous festival awards, including top prizes at the American and Atlanta Film Festivals. While working as a consultant on the film WarGames, he pioneered the use of live computer imagery in motion pictures and subsequently created computer effects for more than a dozen major Hollywood films. He also uses the computer as a paintbrush and is widely known for his photo mosaics and giclée prints, which have been exhibited in galleries around the world.
Steve was among the original members of the Ojai Film Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to enriching the cultural life of the Ojai Valley through its ongoing program of film-related events. From 1992 to 2008, Steve served as the Film Society’s Program Director in which capacity he had the responsibility of selecting the more than three-dozen feature films exhibited by the Society each year.
From 1998 to 2003, Steve served as a Film and Video Panelist for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in their annual scholarship competition
Steve serves on the Executive Committee of the Ojai Art Center Theater and has participated as actor, director and/or technical director in most of the Art Center Theater’s productions during the last twenty years. For several years, he served as a juror at Utah’s Moab Film Festival and is also the founder and Artistic Director of the Ojai Film Festival.