Roy Blakey was a figure skating star and photographer. He is the subject of “Uncle Roy,” a documentary made by Kari Pickett, his niece. The film is showing at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. (Provided)
Photographer and filmmaker Keri Pickett recently returned from Greece after a screening of her documentary “Uncle Roy” at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival. Now, she is getting ready for the film’s American premiere as part of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.
Pickett’s uncle, Roy Blakey, was a multi-hyphenate figure. He was a figure skating star of ice shows for decades, a photographer, a longtime Minneapolis resident and curator of the 44,000-piece “Ice Stage Archives.” He died in 2024 at age 93.
Blakey was featured in Pickett’s earlier documentary, “The Fabulous Ice Age” (2014). Blakey’s archives, considered the largest collection of its kind, are now part of the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, along with his numerous photos of male nudes he took prior to and during the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
Pickett said, “It was great at the Thessaloniki festival to hear the response from international audiences not swayed by the fact that they knew Roy or his work, or saw his archive at some point. People who were unattached to Roy or myself, those people really wept and they laughed, and as a filmmaker, those are the best accolades.”
She said every filmmaker she knows has a strategy to get their films out into the world, and festivals are usually the first stop.
Above, a young Blakey photographed while traveling with his camera. (Provided)
“Every film has its own life and course, but the film festival world is very important, especially in this time of streaming films on dev-ices and seeing things on a small screens or phones, the experience of being in the theater together with community film on the big screen is so important and a really big priority for me as a filmmaker, and sometimes a filmmaker only gets it in the film festival experience.”
Dawn Mikkelsen, the film’s producer, said, “We’re expecting this endearing work will have a robust run on the international festival circuit with at least 50 screenings over the year.” She added that it is important the “Stage Archives” collection remains in the Twin Cities, because several ice shows originated in Minnesota.
These include “Ice Follies,” which was started by Shipstad and Johnson in St. Paul in 1936, and “Ice Capades,” which opened their West coast shows in Duluth. When Blakey skated with “Holiday on Ice,” the show was owned by entrepreneur Morris Chalfen and the company was run out of a building on Nicollet and Franklin Avenues.
Pickett said this production was headquartered in Minneapolis, where she and Roy had shared their Northeast photography studio since 1993. She added that, around that time, she began travelling with Blakey to various iceskating reunions. She discovered the two of them made really good travel partners.
They began going to Southeast Asia together, “Where he gave me his love of that part of the world.” She said that she started the film when she came to realize that Blakey’s archive of the history of theatrical figure skating was so important.
Roy Blakey holds up a poster from his 44,000-piece theatrical figure skating archive collection. (Provided)
Asked about financing, Pickett said, since the work was done over 20 years, “It was mostly just out of pocket,” with Pickett filming where and when she could. She later got financial help through the non-profit FilmNorth, along with “generous donors,” including family friends Nick Green and Carolina Castillo.
“Roy’s generation was not documented. Now every little thing is documented. But his generation’s history exists mostly in 8mm and stills,” says Pickett, whose documentary films include “The Fabulous Ice Age” (2014, Netflix), ““First Daughter and the Black Snake” (2017), and “Finding Her Beat” (2022).
“At a moment when the current administration is actively defunding and erasing queer histories, our filmmaking team all believe the release of ‘Uncle Roy’ is an act of resistance — as much as it is a universal story about love, family, community and the role of photography and collecting to create memory and meaning.”
She described the film as an extension of her book “Love in the ‘90s,”which shared her grandparent’s courtship in love letters from 1929 with her photographs of them toward the end of their lives.
“Historically, my work centers on family and community, often focusing on how much one person can make a difference. In this film that person, Roy, is my grandparent’s son, my mom’s brother and uncle to my sister and myself — so this film reveals my heart.”
Pickett noted that the 87-minute film included archival material in an array of formats, among them 8-millimeter, 16-millimeter, Super 8, and photography in medium, 35-millimeter and 4K digital. The documentary is being represented in the film festival world by the non-profit organization The Film Collaborative.
“Uncle Roy” will be screened at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, April 8-19 at The Main Cinema and screens across the Twin Cities.