Catalina Porto has 5 years in production, although she is trained in Law. She came to the executive management of La Productora in 2017, to strengthen the Caracol Television division, dedicated to providing services for third parties and from which series such as Siempre Bruja, Las Muñecas de la Mafia, Bolívar and Los Briceño, among others, have come from.
Porto claims to be in a company that is full of women. “More than tending quotas, one has to prepare and deserve respect. You have to prepare to achieve excellence, rather than aspire to a quota.”
From her point of view, there is no competition between genders, she pointed out during the PRODU webinar ¡Colombianas Berracas! “Woman must find out in what she is good and unique.” But she does consider that from a gender point of view, among women, it is necessary to celebrate and highlight each time one of them is standing out. “We can’t think that just because you’re a woman you have to be there. The teams have to be diverse.”
For Porto, stories can serve to change points of view. The super-series Bolívar, which tells the life of the Liberator of five South American countries, a hero, a male story, in essence, has managed to work the female characters from another perspective. Juana Uribe, the writer of the series, vindicated the role of Manuelita Sáenz and “gave her place in history without judging her.”
In search of female characters, the pandemic that paralyzed everything opened opportunities for Porto. For the series Ritmo Salvaje, which they produce for Netflix, she managed to include Greeicy Rondón, who otherwise would not have been able to be part of it due to her busy concert schedule. The same happened with another musical series that they are doing for Amazon.
“Due to the pandemic, we were able to bring in talent that in normal circumstances we would not have been able to have. That pausing and rethinking things, reviewing things that did not materialize, has been very important because, in this race against time, that is part of the production, sometimes you don’t have that opportunity.”