Variables that should be set in order to work with gdcmPython:
GDCM_DICT_PATH path to the dictionary GDCM_SOURCE/Dicts/
GDCM_DATA_PATH path to gdcmData
PYTHONPATH path to both GDCM_BIN and GDCM_BIN/bin

e.g.

export GDCM_DICT_PATH=~/cvs/gdcm/Dicts/
export GDCM_DATA_PATH=~/cvs/gdcmData/
export PYTHONPATH=~/cvs/gdcmbin/bin:~/cvs/gdcmbin/