Gustoniai
The ongoing work Gustoniai takes its name from a village in northern Lithuania. Every three years, Darius Žiūra asks each person living there to give one minute of their attention to a video camera. The portraits are assembled into a film lasting approximately one hour. Since the project began in 2001, nine films have been made: Gustoniai 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025.
The films record how a Lithuanian village changes over time: people die and are born, leave, return or move there for the first time. They also register social and economic change and the growing presence of global consumer culture. At the same time, the project traces the development of video technologies, considering how changes in the medium affect visual perception and the understanding of portraiture.
In the summer of 2018, Žiūra organised a cultural and art festival in the village of Gustoniai, where the project was presented to its participants for the first time. Footage recorded during the festival, together with excerpts from the Gustoniai films and material from Žiūra’s personal archive, became the basis of the 2020 documentary film Gustoniai Gustoniuose.