Petr Cikhart

Director of Photography

Petr Cikhart was born and raised in Prague. As a 19-year-old Assistant Director, he covered the war in Chechnya for Czech TV, and was arrested and held hostage for two days by Russian soldiers during the assignment. It was his first field shoot, and he was hooked.

He immigrated to the United States in 1995 after winning a journalism internship at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After finishing his internship and working briefly as a Lobsterman in Maine, he moved to New York City to resume his career behind the camera.

For the last ten years, Petr has worked as a Director of Photography. In this capacity he has traveled to more than 80 countries on all continents for a variety of projects, such as Farmingville (Special Jury Prize, 2004 Sundance Film Festival), Showtime’s LA-gang documentary Gangs: Escaping the Life, and Blindsight (Audience Awards, 2006 AFI Film Festival & 2007 Berlin Film Festival), which was filmed in the Tibetan Himalayas.

He has also lent his talents to several television programs, including CBS’s Emmy-winning series The Amazing Race, National Geographic’s critically acclaimed series Be the Creature, A&E’s Dog The Bounty Hunter, Science Investigators for WGBH, Throwdown with Bobby Flay on Food Network, ABC’s Big Give or Detonators slated to premiere on the Discovery Channel in January 2009.

As part of Petr’s commitmnet to shoot more fiction he has recently worked as the DP of the feature-length movie May the Best Man Win starring members of the Upright Citizens Brigade and the experimental feature Euphoria, which is currently in post production. Other films include the shorts You Can Get It If You Really Want and Bloody Basin or PBS’s musical adventure Fiesta Mexicana.

Some of Petr’s current projects include Left Behind In Louisiana, an emotional documentary about religion and recovery in hurricane tested comunnities and Boxing Clever, which follows three amatuer boxing prospects in England or Kablam: The Science of Fireworks for the National Geogrraphic Channel.

In 2007 Petr won his first Prime Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for his work on the 10th instalment of the The Amazing Race.

As an owner of three Panasonic HD Varicam cameras, Petr has mastered filming in High Definition. He regularly employs alternative filming techniques, including aerial, underwater, and lipstick-camera cinematography. He speaks Czech, English, Italian, Spanish and Russian.