Five in Focus: Claudio Contreras

By FocusFeatures.com  | March 31, 2009 @ 12:56 pm

From a self-taught education in Mexico, Claudio Salvador Contreras Ramos began working in different art fields. These ranged from performance art (“El Sindicato del terror”) to installations. One of the latter, “E=mc2,” brought him honors from the Encuentro Nacional de Arte Joven. He then began working in the art department on feature films, including John Frankenheimer’s telefilm The Burning Season and Alex de la Iglesia’s Perdita Durango (as set decorator). As an art director, Mr. Contreras designed television commercials, music videos, and short and feature films. Among the latter were Arturo Ripstein’s Así es lavida and La perdición de los hombres. He has won two Ariel Awards (Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscar), as part of the art direction/set decoration team on Luis Estrada’s Ámbar and Jaime Hermosillo’s De noche vienes, Esmeralda. Mr. Contreras now works as a production designer, and as such his feature credits have included Francisco Vargas Quevedo’s award-winning El Violín and Agustín “Oso” Tapia’s Club Eutanasia; and, among other projects, Shakira’s music video “Illegal.”