400 - A Dangerous Movie in the Best Way Possible

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I had the pleasure of speaking with filmmaker Josh David Jordan about his new movie El Tonto Por Cristo. It’s a black-and-white art film set in a Texas monastery — poetic, strange, and deeply moving. What struck me most is how the film weaves together powerful Orthodox imagery, the mystery of the holy fool, all with a totally unique visual language. This isn’t just a message movie — it’s real cinema.
Check out the Kickstarter and be part of bringing this movie to theaters. This is a rare and important project.
El Tonto Por Cristo: A Cinematic Meditation. An Orthodox film set in a Texas monastery. Help bring this black-and-white story of beauty, holiness, & mystery to theaters worldwide.
https://www.eltontoporcristo.com/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/748841722/el-tonto-por-cristo-a-cinematic-meditation

Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/pbM5VN9YvCE

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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/

Transcript

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0:00.0	But your movie has within the aesthetics of the movie.
0:04.6	So it's like the very way the story is told and the very way it's shot and some of the images, embed the Holy Fool structure in it.
0:13.8	So it's not like you're using a nice kind of normal way of people, the way people, a modern cinema audience looks at a movie, like here's
0:22.3	just a frame, a box, and I'm watching a story, but you use aesthetic means in the story
0:27.8	to bring about the thing. And so there's an interesting modern aspect to what you're doing,
0:33.4	but that's why I think the movie is so It's so particular because of that
0:38.7	Because the very means by which you tell the story
0:41.5	Are making you experience what it is the movie is about
0:45.3	This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world.
1:10.7	Hello, everyone. I am here with Josh David Jordan. Hello, everyone.
1:12.1	I am here with Josh David Jordan.
1:15.1	Josh is a Texan filmmaker.
1:17.8	You can tell just by looking at him.
1:21.0	He just put out his, well, not put out.
1:24.0	Like he just finished his second feature film,
1:25.9	which is called El Tonto Procristo.
1:28.9	It is a really beautiful and poetic exploration of this imagery around the Holy Fool and kind of this edge of the
1:36.8	world symbolism of this monastery in Texas. It's a very beautiful movie. I had the chance to see
1:42.6	with Richard Rowland, Deacon Seraphim,
1:46.0	maybe a few months ago, and was kind of blown away.
1:48.6	I've been following this movie for several months, for like a year now, I think.
1:52.7	You know, I met Josh before, and I'd seen a kind of rough cut of the movie, but finally
	...

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