After passing her final school exams in 1959 she undertook a one-year practical training as a sorter at the wood processing plant in Wiederitzsch (Leipzig).

[1] By this time the Soviet occupation zone had become the stand-alone German Democratic Republic, politically separate both from the former US, British and French occupation zones, which together now comprised the German Federal Republic, and from those parts of Germany to the east of the country's new eastern frontier agreed in 1945 at Potsdam conference, most of which were now incorporated within the redrawn frontiers of Poland or the Soviet Union.

Between 1961 and 1967 she studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK / Всероссийский государственный университет кинематографии имени С.А.Герасимова) in Moscow where her teachers included Mikhail Romm.

[4] Her own first film, "The Dove on the Roof" (1973) was not released for general viewing in the German Democratic Republic and the original footage was destroyed at the studio.

The film concerns a professionally successful young female engineer from Mecklenburg called Linda Hinrichs in search of fulfillment in her private life (played by Heidemarie Wenzel), and her evolving relationships with two contrasting men.

In 1993, she directed the TV film "Sommerliebe" [fr] with Iris Berben in the lead role of a 48-year-old painter who fell in love with her son's study friend.

In 2012, Gusner travelled to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States to give a retrospective of her films, and discuss her portrayal on emancipating women of East Germany.