Born in Denver, Colorado in 1970, Grant Barbeito began painting at the age of seven, and creating theater in the family basement for his sisters schoolmates. Grant won state recognition for his painting while in high school with his winning painting displayed locally in Denver. Telling stories through art and film would turned out to be the great obsession in Grant’s life.

Grant studied painting and composition at Lorenzo de’ Medici – The Italian International Institute for Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. This created a thirst for travel, art history and fed a passion for creating stories with pictures and film. He graduated to making films after taking a summer workshop with Stan Brakhage at the University of Colorado in Boulder. While working in his Grandparents’ family restaurant in Arlington Heights, Illinois, Grant started making 16mm films on his Grandfathers 70 DR Bell & Howell Filmo Movie camera. He was hooked and started applying to art and film schools in New York and Los Angeles.

In 1992, Grant received a Silas H. Rhodes Scholarship Award to go to School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan’s East Side. While still a full time fine arts student, Grant studied film writing, editing and directing and took a great interest in acting when he co-produced the play “In Search of Strinberg” for famed Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors at The Actors Studio.

While in New York, he met Norwegian Cinematographer Calle Borresen. Together and they explored how to create the rich look of paintings on film by choosing or creating unique environments to tell a story. Grant received several grants from the AGFA film corporation for excellence in film making, as well as, grants from FUJI and DuArt Film Labs.

In 1999, Grant was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival with his short film, RUBEN. RUBEN was a big break for Grant and his directing career as well as taking him around the world as audiences in France, Japan, Korea, Spain, Canada, Germany viewed the film. Ruben was selected to be a part of more than 30 film festivals worldwide and dozens in the US festivals including honorable mentions from the Los Angeles Film Festival, Deauville International Film Festival, Newport Film Festival, Tokyo-American Short Shorts Film Festival, Puchone Film Festival, and the Wine Country Film Festival.

Grant’s first experience as a documentary cinematographer and director was at MTV and PBS creating artist profiles. He soon went on to create a documentary and film team at Urban Box Office, creating dozens of short documentary projects with a focus on new and upcoming talents in the art and music world. Grant has worked as a documentary cinematographer for over ten years in television and feature films. Some of his experience includes shooting the Goodwill Games, Habitat for Humanity with President Jimmy Carter, network shows such as “Showbiz Mom’s and Dad’s', “Airline”, and “Mystery ER”. As a cinematographer in documentary features, Grant has worked on Before the Music Dies, Living Liberal In Kansas, Bettie Paige Reveals All http://www.bettiepagemovie.com/ and the Oscar award winning SICKO directed by Michael Moore.

For several years Grant showed his commitment to a healthy environment by volunteering with Heal the Bay, organizing beach clean ups and creating PSA’s, for environmental non-profits. Grant put these experiences and observations into a venture Earth Protect, www.earthprotect.com in August 2007. Earth Protect uses video and social media to inspire people to take actions in their lives leading to a sustainable future. Through this venture, Grant met Dick Franklin, Missy’s Dad, which lead to his involvement with a film about Missy’s rise in the swimming world.

Grant first met co-director and editor Christo Brock when working on Living Liberal In Kansas. The two worked on several industrial commercials and Max Storm’s “Breath” DVD. It was a clear the two made a great team and they began developing projects together. In 2009, Grant and Christo collaborated on SLAP. SLAP went on to numerous awards and showings at film festivals and is currently on a Museum ExhibitionTour¡ Tribeca’s premier of America: Now and Here. Grant and Christo started a film production studio and sound stage at 1320main.com in the heart of Venice Beach California.

Grant lives in Venice Beach with his wife Lillian and his two-year old son Oliver.