The film portrays the 1746 Battle of Culloden, the final act in the attempted Jacobite Rebellion and among the first major steps in Great Britain's near-genocide of the original Highland clans of Scotland.
The word "seminal" is often bandied about these days but it is accurate to say that Watkins's Culloden is truly a seminal work, which, in many ways, changed forever the way in which documentary and historical programmes were shot.
Culloden achieves its effect through the glaringly anachronistic use of a TV crew, begging its spectator to ponder her position in relation to the historical events onscreen.