With a degree in the Fine Arts and distinction in Video art from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University, Syracuse (U.S.A.), Cifuentes made his first cinema and video works at the beginning of the nineties.
The themes of “Diálogo de Sordos” [Dialogue of the Deaf] (1995), a short film presented at the Tampere International Film Festival in Tampere (Finland, 1996), are connected with love, death and devotion.
Chile’s politics, the violence of the dictatorship and the marks left by torture are among the themes dealt with in the video “Lecciones Nocturnas” [Night Classes] (1998), an experimental documentary that uses editing – repeating, for example, the same shots – in order to emphasize the need to preserve memory and history.
In the video “Reconocimiento de Lugar” [Recognizing a place] (2002), Cifuentes explores the intersections between the lives of different individuals and the transformations in Santiago’s urban landscape.
His videos were shown at the Podewil Zentrum für Aktuelle Künste in Berlin (1999); at “ARCO”, Madrid (2001); at the Locarno Video Festival in Switzerland (2001); the “5ª Bienal de Vídeo y Nuevos Medios MAC” in Santiago, Chile (2001); and at the “Transmediale” in Berlin, Germany (2001); amongst others.

Artist Code: 619