There Was an Unseen Cloud Moving (1988)

A fragmented experimental biography of the 19thcentury poet and writer Isabelle Eberhardt whose brief unusual life ended abruptly in a flash flood in the desert The tape makes no claims to telling the truth about Isabelle choosing rumors about her tyrannical nihilistic father and her flight to Armenia where she dressed as a man and wrote one of the strangest documents a woman has ever given to the world Following Eberhardts travels and the strangely syncretic vision of her father Thornton creates a portrait of cultural crossbreeding in which neither this world nor the other remains In all There Was An Unseen Cloud Moving is an arresting mixture of rare and iconic images that undermines its authenticity through reenacted historical scenes and deliberate anachronisms that place Neil Armstrong in 19thcentury Geneva Video Data Bank