There was an Unseen Cloud Moving is part documentary, part personal meditation. The piece is the first in a series of Thornton's projects that focus on the life and work of Isabelle Eberhardt, an explorer who died in 1904 in Algeria while traveling in the Maghreb disguised as a man, and who recounted her journeys in journals published after her death. Thornton composes a collage of theatrical and filmic representations of Eberhardt, including archival photographs and footage, press documents, extracts from Eberhardt's journals, and voiceover narration by Thornton. Scenes from Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko punctuate the biography, adding a fictional dimension to the representations. The complex editing, rife with repetitions and digressions, reveals and critiques the univocal nature of historical and biographical narratives. Simultaneously, Thornton considers the role of women as explorers throughout history and investigates her own relationship to these heroines as well as the means by which identity is narrativized by oneself and by others.