Director Sergio Henriques has signed with New York-based Compulsive Pictures for U.S. representation. Henriques is based in Lisbon, where he maintains his own Tangerina Azul Internacional. Through that firm he helmed Bayer’s "Dog" via J. Walter Thompson Publicidad, Lisbon, which won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in 1998. Other credits include a four-spot Galp Gasoline campaign through TBWA EPG, Lisbon.
Henriques studied filmmaking at the now defunct Television Learning Academy, Johannesburg, and eventually settled in Lisbon in January ’89. He worked as an assistant editor before joining commercial production house Panorâmica 35 Produção De Filmes as a camera assistant/assistant editor in ’91. About a year later, he started freelancing as an assistant director for longform production companies including Costa do Castelo Filmes, Lisbon. Henriques did this for two years, making short films in his spare time. In ’94, he founded Metropolis Filmes, where he made the low-budget spot "Bald Man" for hair care products company MSS Teixeira, through Young & Rubicam Portugal, Lisbon. "That was the first proper commercial that I did," recalled Henriques, "and it was short-listed at Cannes in ’95."
When Henriques was invited to rejoin Panorâmica 35 as a director in mid-’95, he folded Metropolis and returned to his former home. He left less than a year later and founded Tangerina Azul with executive producer Paolo José Ruivo. For the next two and a half years, "it was nonstop work," Henriques recalled. After the Bronze Lion win at Cannes in ’98, offers to rep him outside of Portugal started coming in, but Henriques felt obliged to concentrate on Tangerina Azul rather than on his career. "You can’t say, ‘I’m going to Germany tomorrow,’ leaving the rest of the company without a director," he told SHOOT. But eventually Henriques decided to expand his company, "so I could take a step back [from the business] and take my directing career further."
Over the past several years, Henriques has added numerous staffers, including directors Gideon Nel and Joao Nuno Pinto, executive producer Miguel Varela, and executive producer for foreign projects Margarida Adonis. This enabled Henriques to leave the day-to-day running of Tangerina Azul to others and to work abroad more frequently. Since last year, he has formed various affiliations, and is now repped by Blue Channel, Barcelona, in Spain; Peterson Naumann, Hamburg, in Germany; and Renaissance Films—with offices in Jakarta, Indonesia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Singapore—in Southeast Asia.
Upon deciding to seek U.S. representation, Henriques sent copies of his reel to various companies, and last October he and Adonis came to New York to meet with several interested producers, including Compulsive executive producers Jack Turney and Donald O’Connor. Turney and O’Connor were impressed with Henriques, and, according to Turney, "Signing Sergio was a giant step for us. Very few opportunities exist to introduce a player [director] of his level into the U.S. market. He’s a top-tier talent who’s not one of the usual suspects: He’s not a young director with a few spec pieces; there’s an amazing depth and scope to his work."
In describing his style, Henriques explained, "A lot of my work is very visual. And because I’ve worked as an editor, intricate postproduction work is very easy for me. When I started showing my reel around here, everyone said, ‘This is interesting—you direct comedy, but you also have visual and storytelling spots.’ " He pointed out that "In the United States, directors tend to specialize [in certain types of work]. We can’t do that in Europe—we wouldn’t work enough." Henriques, who as of yet has no plans to relocate stateside, expects that much of his work here will reflect his skills as a visual stylist.
Compulsive Pictures’ roster of directors also consists of Jörgen Lööf, Tony Ober, Charlie Carlson and Brendan Donovan. Compulsive is repped by Nancy Workman and Christo Petranis of Workman, New York, on the East Coast; Julie Vargo and Patrice Bockos of Vargo Bockos, Chicago, in the Midwest; and Los Angeles-based Rachel Finn and San Francisco’s Mary Saxon of Finn Saxon Represents, which handles the West Coast and Texas.
