Thelma Gutsche

Names: Gutsche, Thelma
In summary: Artist, founding member of the Simon van der Stel Foundation and a trustee and life president of the Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery
Gutsche was a founding member of the Simon van der Stel Foundation and a trustee and life president of the Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. She was also part of many other organisations and in 1966 won the Central News Agency (CNA) prize for her book No ordinary woman: The life and times of Florence Phillips. She wrote numerous other books, and was known as a feminist. Another of her very well known works was The history and social significance of motion pictures in South Africa. This book contains archival, social and cultural research on the history of film in South Africa. It does not only look at South African film, but also at international film and the influence and effect of these films on South Africa and on society. She actually tends to focus more on work from outside South Africa, and especially focusing on the European traditions and influence. The study was first written as a thesis, but only published much later after she had published other studies. Gutsche looks into the creation of order through society and the effect of film on this order, together with the rising modernism in South Africa and specifically in Johannesburg. She writes as a cultural historian rather than as a film historian, and the book is best understood together with her other works.
References
- R. Kriger & A. Zegeye (eds), After apartheid volume 2: Culture in the new South Africa, 2001, Pretoria & Cape Town
- E.J. Verwey (ed), New dictionary of South African biography. Pretoria, 1995, pp 88-89




