Fanny Veliz Grande Cofounder of Avenida Productions

Fanny Grande (Formerly Fanny Véliz) is a Venezuelan-American award-winning filmmaker, actor, and director with more than 20 years of experience in the entertainment business. Grande, who was born in the US, grew up in Venezuela performing from a very young age. She returned to the States to attend college, she quickly realized that roles available for her and other Latinos were very limited and often portrayed negative stereotypes. So she decided to start creating her own content.

5 years ago she co-founded Avenida Productions with her husband Nelson Grande. Avenida is a consulting and production firm that specializes in empowering independent media content creators with a focus on diversity. To date, Avenida has helped raise millions of dollars via crowdfunding for over 150 media projects.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Influential Women on Pandocap. Today we are speaking with Fanny Grande. 

Fanny, welcome to the Pandocap show! We are so excited to have you. 

Q: Can you please tell us a little bit about your journey and can you share that with our audience?

A:  My name is Fanny Grande. I am the CEO and co-founder of Avenida Productions and we created this company to give a path, avenue, to filmmakers of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. And the reason we did that was because I am a Latina and I grew up in Venezuela and when I moved to the US to pursue my career in acting I found that most of the roles for me were stereotypes and they were very limited. There were very few roles and a college professor encouraged me to just start creating my own roles so that’s what I did. Twenty years ago I started making films. I set out to make a feature film called Homebound. And I pitched it to production companies and studios like you’re supposed to. And I thought, ‘I’m an award winning filmmaker. Of course people are going to jump at the opportunity.’ But it just didn’t happen. I wanted to make a film about an American Latino family without stereotypes. That’s it. And nobody was biting. They were like, “well you don’t have any celebrities in it so we can’t sell it.” Well as a community back then we only had like 2 celebrities and JLo can’t be in every movie, right? I’m trying to make celebrities. And that’s how Avenida was born. And what we do is create a path, an avenue, for filmmakers who otherwise would not have an opportunity to create their projects, to create their projects using technology: crowdfunding, production and distribution. That’s where we are. We’ve been in business for 5 years now. We’ve raised millions of dollars for hundreds of projects. Some of our clients’ films have been on Netflix, on Showtime, HBO, Starz, theatrical distributions. Some of our clients have been nominated for the Emmys, the Oscars. It’s really cool to know that an idea that we had has made such a huge impact in this industry that usually excludes us. That’s to let you know that you can create your own path. You don’t have to wait for anybody else to give you the green light. There is always a way. And that’s always been my philosophy. So that is my career in a nutshell. 

Q: What are some of the major changes that you're experiencing in your industry?

A: 2021 really changed Hollywood because the pandemic played a huge role. A Lot of us were just home watching TV, watching films. Theatres shut down. All of a sudden people realized how important entertainment is. And also because of the Black Lives Matter movement and the marches that happened and the political situation, a lot of people like me, who have been working in this industry for 20 years with very little opportunities from the system, have started to get some opportunities. I’ve been getting meetings with major streamers and studios and opportunities that were not there before. So that’s a positive change. We’ll see. A Lot of it I’m still kind of waiting to see because my experience is that a lot of these have been lip service. They’ll say “oh no, we want to be more inclusive” but at the end they don’t actually take the actions to make an impact. It does seem like this is a little different this time and that’s exciting. 

Q: Have you seen more opportunities for women in Hollywood and do you think there’s been significant progress?

A: There’s been change. It’s disproportionate when it comes to White women compared to women of color but unfortunately for the Latino community we’ve lost some ground. I do know of a few projects coming out that I’m hopeful will be a watershed moment for our community and open doors for women, especially Latinas in the industry. 

That’s awesome. Well thank you so much Fanny for joining us on the Pandocap Show. We look forward to highlighting your success, not only this year but many years to come. 

Thank you so much for having me. This is an honor to be here with you Laura because you’re an example to so many Latinas so I’m very grateful that you invited me.