Songcatcher is a 2000 drama film 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. 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 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. With the help of a musically talented orphan named Deladis Slocumb , Lily ventures into isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs.
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| Release date: | January 25, 2000 |
| Directed by: | Maggie Greenwald Mansfield |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 109 Minutes |
| Producer: | Richard Miller, Ellen Rigas-Venetis |
| Editor: | Keith Reamer |
| Music by: | David Mansfield |
| Cinematography: | Enrique Chediak |
| Screenplay by: | Maggie Greenwald Mansfield |
| Estimated budget: | $1,800,000 |
| Genre: | Musical |