For the past sixteen years, The Ojai Valley has been home to the Ojai Film Society, a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to enhancing the cultural life of Ventura County through a variety of motion picture-related events presented throughout the year.

The Film Society's primary activity is an annual series of 36 distinguished films shown at The Ojai Playhouse movie theater on Sunday afternoons.

In 1998, the Film Society's Program Director, Steve Grumette, was invited to serve as a juror at the Canyonlands Film Festival in Moab, Utah. With a comparable population and boasting both a vibrant arts community and a spectacular natural environment, Moab is similar to Ojai in many ways. Unlike Ojai, however, which has several million people living within a 75-mile radius, Moab is situated in the middle of a vast desert, with the closest large city more than 200 miles away. And so, on his return from Utah, it occurred to Steve that if Moab could support a thriving film festival, why not Ojai? From that germ of an idea, the Ojai Film Festival was born.

At the next meeting of the Board of Directors of the Ojai Film Society, Steve proposed that they establish their own film festival, and after many months of investigation and debate, the plan was finally approved. On November 15, 2000, nearly two years of intensive effort by more than a hundred volunteers culminated in the opening of the first Ojai Film Festival to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from filmmakers and filmgoers alike.

After two very successful years of operation, The Ojai Film Festival became too large an event to remain a project of the Ojai Film Society, and so early in 2002, the festival established itself as an independent nonprofit foundation, dedicated to continuing and expanding the traditions created during the first two years.