-Cilento's scholarship focuses on films whose main characteristic lies in reconstructing historical events, mainly political crises and conspiracies.
-He's published in journals such as Fast Capitalism, The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, California Italian Studies, and Teorijia in praksa.
-Two of his essays are included in collections The Cinema of Marco Tullio Giordana and Pier Paolo Pasolini: American Perspectives
-He regularly presents articles at the Modern Language Association conferences and at various Film and Digital Humanities conferences.
-He's launched collaborative digital media project Cinemablography; presented at the Re: Humanities 2013 symposium; Pioneering YouTube; presented at the PAMLA conference; co-produced the short films Palace (selected at national festivals and awarded at FirstGlance) and Dragoon Online.
-Cilento has received four year teaching reallocation grant to develop a Visual Science Fiction database.
-He leads Italian Cityscape and the Flow of Life, an annual cross-cultural program in Florence every May.