Ramfis Myrthil, Film Producer, Film Consultant and Speaker: Spiritual law the more you
give the more you get I'm not looking to get more but it's just how the universe works
so I believe in that so I give a lot and I get a lot.
Film Courage: What does it mean to give a voice to the voiceless?
Ramfis: Well perfect example is our film Cicada. It's based off a true story. Matt [Matthew Fifer]
shared an intimate part of his life and the abuse that he went through and it was very
hard for him to share that and I remember when we were doing test screenings of our film that
we'd have people that we don't know come to the screenings to give feedback because we don't want
people to say what we want to hear we want constructive criticism and this one guy came
at the end came up to Matt specifically and said this was me I've never had the I've been I've
never been able to tell anyone and what I've went through and thank you so much for making
this like you've given a voice and that was the first time we had heard it and we've traveled
all over Europe recently with the film and all of the country with the film it's played at various
festivals and it was in theaters and there were so many people so many men that have come up
and shared with the team Matt, myself, Kieran [Kieran Mulcare] that we've given them a voice
so do a lot of them say they were family members that did this or a friend of the family
I think it's a combination of both like they didn't all go into like great detail
about it but they just wanted to acknowledge that they had gone through it they understand it
and how our project was therapeutic that was more or less how and so and cicada is also
about a relationship too it's not all about abuse it's about two men that find love yeah it's about
an interracial relationship between these two guys that meet over a summer and it deals with
bisexuality which is not touched upon in film a lot in the interracial relationship the dynamics
of that it also deals with trauma because there's a lot of trauma around both characters
and it's at the spirit awards correct yes it's nominated for best first screenplay very cool
did you think that that it would have a chance or did people say oh this this is not going to
sell this is not going to be something people will be interested in it might scare people in terms of
anything whether it's the bisexuality the abuse in terms of what's selling the movement yeah
would it would it would it be too much of a hard sell or would people open welcome it with open
arms because finally people were telling stories that it seemed like had been pushed to the side
along the way I feel like we made so many errors on that project we didn't know what to expect
I knew it was a good script and it changed because of certain things that had happened
to Sheldon [Sheldon D. Brown] in real life which molded into the script so
what we went in with initially wasn't what we thought would end with and I think that we did get
we ultimately did when the Kenneth reigning grant we got funding from sf film and Kendall
Freeman grant and one of the reasons I think that they got behind us was our POV our point of view
and that we were telling a very challenging story and we needed the support and after we won it
they basically got TFI Tribeca film institute involved and we were part of a special
segment at the Tribeca film festival in 2019 and at that point we we didn't know
where we're gonna land but we had meetings with everybody under the sun from 824 to
you name it that were interested in one so we knew we had something special
and that's where we met our sales rep Jeffrey Winter at The Film Collaborative
who ultimately really helped the entire process because he understands the queer space very well
he's been very successful in the queer space and at the time when we shot the film my producing
partner Jeremy [Jeremy Truong] was 21. he had just graduated NYU everyone was in their 20s
I was 34 so I was the grandfather of the whole group we're very young team and we made a lot of
errors and mistakes and Jeffrey gave us guidance he gave us confidence in terms of the project he
was like a godfather to Matt and he made a lot of introductions and really supported the film and
and he gave us the pros and cons in terms of all the distributors that we're speaking with
and that really helped the project so we knew we were gonna land somewhere we didn't know
where we were going to land and the great thing is that we had options of who we wanted
to go with in the u.s and many of the other countries that we ended up getting a deal in
it kind of shaped throughout the process and were there certain other countries that were very open
to the film and then others that refused to have it well we haven't sold all the territories yet so
I think that there's maybe still opportunities to do that I don't think it'll sell in Russia because
they're anti-queer so anyway that's anti-queer probably is not gonna work and it was interesting
being in Poland because their government the country's fastest their government is anti-queer
if you want to call it a blue dot Warsaw and Poznań are two places that are and
it was quite a feat to be able to get the film there and and there were some concerns about going
there the team was nervous about going there and like what if something can happen and but
our pulse distributor took really good care of us and we were with someone the entire time and they
picked us up and kind of had security detail with that and when I spoke to the people of Poznań.
Poznań is the biggest queer city in Poland they were just thrilled to have us and I asked how
is it to live out there what is it like and they consider themselves freedom fighters and standing
up for their rights and this is the way it is they're not gonna back down Warsaw is a much
bigger city I wanna say that they're just a lot more open there with that in consideration but
we're well received in both cities and I want to say with all the other cities that we've
played in so far that's been the case they were just happy that we're able to come and engage
through intros and do detailed q and a's with the audience and the film is coming out in France I
think this month or next month we're not gonna make that leg the friends didn't necessarily play
nice with all the other distributors because when we went out there it was a coordination
between our UK distributor our polish distributor and german distributor so France said we're gonna
release when we want to when we feel like it we don't need to coordinate with them so
so we'll be coming out and I'm sure it's gonna be a huge hit in France and throughout France
so no other countries aside from those just just it sounds I believe Switzerland as well because
when we sold Germany certain parts of Switzerland are german speaking I believe and there were talks
about Portugal but that's those are all the locations for for right now why is it your
mission to make these stories my mission to tell these stories is very important because now I'm
gonna get spiritual with you I consider myself a light worker and what a light worker is is
someone in whatever industry or business uses their skills or their talents to make the world a
better place and be kind and and and help mankind and I believe when god gives you or the creator
gives you certain tools it's your responsibility to share that with the world so I enjoy helping
people and there was a class that the New York Times had talked about at Harvard that
everyone was looking to get into and and it was a class on happiness the class had sold out this was
like a couple years ago and ultimately when they broke down the class it was that people are happy
when they help other people that's the really what it is so I enjoy helping other people I help
all walks of life doesn't matter religion creed whatever and I know that if it was me
or if it was my family member and I needed the help because there's times where I do need help
and it's not always necessarily what I'm giving I'm asking for back but this times that I may
struggle with something as a diabetic or or there was this one time where I legit lost my wallet
in manhattan and I had no way to get around or get into anything and like this
person at chase was very kind to let me take some of my money out so I can get home but you know
I've had times where I've lost unfortunately it happened a few times where I've lost my wallet and
and it's not that I don't have money it's just I didn't have money on me to be able to get to
where I need to go do what I need to do and everyone needs help with something so I believe
that it's my responsibility to share that with the world whether it's speaking engagements doing HBCU
tour producing these films around these issues doing social impact trying to find someone that
was falsely incarcerated and trying to help rehabilitate them because I'm aware the fact that
I'm aware if I did wasn't aware it's different if I'm aware and I can do something why not
it's not hurting me it's only helping others and it's helping me and spiritual law
the more you give the more you get I'm not looking to get more but it's just how the universe works
so I believe in that so I give a lot and I get a lot when did you realize you were a light worker
I want to say it was around that same time in 2016 when I was in Istanbul
I started meeting a lot more light workers and energy healers and and learning more
about this world I had this woman that was very dear to me named Arlie and she was a big
inspiration I learned a lot through her and met a lot of her friends and colleagues that were
that shaped my character and point of view on these things so I want to say that the tipping
point was probably around 2016. have you ever tried to help someone that didn't want help
all the time but one of the things that I've learned is that I have to respect that because
I can't because if I force it on them it's going to backfire and I may take their karma
at the same time so they have to ask for it they have to ask for the help and want the help because
they're not going to value it at the same time so in the beginning or not in the beginning before
I was really into my I found my flow i'd overstep i'd offer advice when people ask me advice I help
people when they didn't ask for help and and it would backfire on me because maybe i'd get
frustrated and like wait we didn't ask you to do this you didn't have to do I didn't want you
to do this so there's no appreciation so and I just learned it wasn't on me like it wasn't my
place to tell someone what they should do if they come to me and ask it's different thing if they
ask for help but it was a hard lesson to learn and even now with like family and friends people that
I really care and love sometimes I want to do stuff for them but it's not my place
and I have to respect their boundary and respect that spiritual law that boundary.