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Songcatcher
Sign in to saveSongcatcher is a 2000 American drama film written and directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle. The film grossed $3 million in limited theatrical release in the United States, which was generally consi
Film · TMDB
6.2After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted.
Cast
- Janet McTeer as Professor Lily Penleric, PhD
- Michael Goodwin as Professor Wallace Aldrich, PhD
- Gregory Russell Cook as Fate Honeycutt
- Jane Adams as Eleanor 'Elna' Penleric
- E. Katherine Kerr as Harriet Tolliver
- Emmy Rossum as Deladis Slocumb
Themes
- musical
- woman director
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Ratings
IMDb
7.2/10
3,798 votes
Rotten Tomatoes
74%
Metacritic
63/100
- Year
- 2000
- Runtime
- 109 min
- Genres
- Drama, Music
- Rated
- PG-13
- Awards
- 5 wins & 5 nominations total
via OMDb · IMDb
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
13 sectionsContents
- Plot
- Cast
- Production
- Inspiration and historical accuracy
- Soundtrack
- Track listing
- Chart performance
- Reception
- Accolades
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Songcatcher is a 2000 American drama film written and directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle. The film grossed $3 million in limited theatrical release in the United States, which was generally considered as a respectable result for an arthouse film release in 2001.
== Plot == In 1907, Dr. Lily Penleric, a professor of musicology, is denied a promotion at the university where she teaches. She impulsively visits her sister Eleanor, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There, she discovers a treasure trove of traditional English and Scotch-Irish ballads, which have been preserved by the secluded mountain people since the colonial period of the 1600s and 1700s. Lily decides to record and transcribe the songs and share them with the outside world.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Songcatcher” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.