CHEYENNE PICARDO

Director / Editor / Writer

Cheyenne Picardo received her BA in Film Studies and Creative Writing from Columbia College, determined to be a film critic and theorist. Then she fell in love with editing and documenting self-described freaks of the New York performance scene, eventually earning her MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. Just before grad school, Picardo took the job that inspired her first feature film REMEDY, that of a pro-switch (dominatrix/submissive) at a commercial dungeon in New York City. Her focus recently has been using subjective storytelling techniques to explore sexuality, gender, mental health, memory, and marginalization. Her recent work includes Bob the Drag Queen’s debut comedy special Suspiciously Large Woman and the Street Beatz documentary short series with recent winner of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 4, Monét X Change.

Picardo is producing and directing Her Next Mission, an episodic political procedural documentary. This project will follow Alexandra Chandler as she leaves the Office of Naval Intelligence and runs for Congress with ambitions of being the first openly transgender woman to serve in the House of Representatives.

In her limited spare time, Picardo also co-hosts a podcast about media portrayals of urban life in the 1970s called Terrific City with journalist Melissa Gira Grant.The first season, a response to the HBO series The Deuce, wrapped in November 2017. She is also developing a podcast dissecting sex work representations in media under the working title Red Light Media.

She hopes to harness the power of the mass-media’s influence over culture to destroy outdated and dangerous tropes. She is committed as a filmmaker and film educator to dismantling the destructive legacy of the Hays Code, one frame at a time.