Introduction

Jeff Preiss’s Orchard Documents are a series of experimental film collaborations the filmmaker made with other members of Orchard, a cooperatively run gallery that operated on New York City’s Lower East Side between 2005 and 2008. Filmed within the context of exhibitions organised by the gallery’s members, each document employs unique cinematographic techniques and formats to convey Orchard’s activities over its three-year lifespan. The resulting films are more than an exhibition history, instead positing that documentation itself, through various forms, can be generative rather than purely representative.

For Preiss, the gallery was a studio and contained within it the raw material from which to generate moving image works that fall somewhere between experimental film and documentary.

Already a seasoned filmmaker and cinematographer by the time Orchard was founded, he was one of twelve members who co-ran the space. The other members included Rhea Anastas, Moyra Davey,…