Movies - Culloden

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Culloden is a documentary film written and directed by Peter Watkins and originally broadcast by the BBC on December 15, 1964. It portrays the Jacobite uprising and the 1746 Battle of Culloden that "tore apart forever the clan system of the Scottish Highlands". Described in its opening credit as "an account of one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Britain", Culloden was hailed as a breakthrough for its cinematography as well as use of amateur actors. It was based on John Prebble's study of the battle.

It was Watkins' first full-length film, and his first use of a pseudo-documentary technique in which actors portray historical characters being interviewed by filmmakers on the scene, "as though it was happening in front of news cameras". The US army was "pacifying" Vietnam at that time, and Watkins was motivated to "draw a parallel between these events and what had happened in our own UK Highlands two centuries earlier". The docudrama technique was intended to be "deliberately reminiscent of scenes from Vietnam which were appearing on TV at that time."

Watkins also "wanted to break through the conventional use of professional actors in historical melodramas, with the comfortable avoidance of reality that these provide, and to use amateurs - ordinary people - in a reconstruction of their own history." He accordingly used an all-amateur cast from London and the Scottish Lowlands for the royalist forces, and people from Inverness for the clan army.

Culloden won both the Society of Film and Television Arts BBC Award of Merit and the British Screenwriters' Award of Merit in 1965. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, Culloden was placed 64th.

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# This became a central technique of Watkins' filmmaking, later embracing cast participation in improvising the script and intended as a democratic communication tool. Such empowering use of the medium, also articulated in his media criticism, makes Watkins' work exceptionally radical, partly explaining the professional marginalisation he has been subjected to.

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Movies - Culloden

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