It wasn’t the easy route

Minnesota filmmaker Keri Pickett said that making a documentary is like taking an expensive one-way ticket to an unknown destination.
“You invest a tremendous amount of time and energy in a story you think will go somewhere interesting, but you really don’t know whee it will go. Rarely is a story told in chronological order, and rarely does it stay the same.”
Pickett’s documentary, “Uncle Roy,” will be screening at the 2026 Minneapolis St. Paul Film Festival (MSPIFF).
The film centers on her uncle Roy Blakey’s life as a professional ice show skater and his career as a photographer. His collection of 44,000 items related to ice shows is also featured.
But the documentary is also a story about love, the close relationship that Pickett and her uncle share, and her growing role as a caretaker as he ages.
Pickett started working on “Uncle Roy,” her fourth documentary, 20 years ago.”When I started the film, I knew there was a story in there,” she said, “but I did not expect to be in the film the way I am. That only came about because of my singular role as his caretaker.
“I don’t like it when a director’s voice is in a film, and here I am in the movie. It just had to be that way. I am the person telling the story. Our relationship had to be in it.”

HE KICKER HER OUT FOR TYING UP HIS PHONE
Pickett graduated from Moorhead State University with a degree in photography and moved to New York, where she stayed with her uncle a couple of weeks.
“He kicked me out because I was using his phone all the time looking for work and tying up his line,” she said. She moved in with one of his friends and then found her own place in Hell’s Kitchen. She got a job as a photo journalist with the Village Voice. In 1988, she received a cancer diagnosis and moved back to Minnesota for treatment.
Her uncle followed her, and he and Pickett set up a studio together in Minneapolis in 1993.
Pickett finished her first film, “The Fabulous Ice Age,” in 2013 about the history of ice skating. Her uncle tied the history together, but the film focused on ice skating and barely touched on his life.
“I wanted to tell more about his personal story, and I just kept filming Roy after the movie was finished,” Pickett said.
She kept filming and did some editing as time went on. “I actively was watching Roy age, and I wanted to do a film that did not have a funeral in it. That was my goal, and it became a race against the clock.
“I realized I needed help to finish the film. I was too close to it to do the editing by myself, and I called on Dawn to help.” Dawn Mikkelson is a fellow filmmaker who has collaborated with Pickett before.
“It is very hard to make a documentary film. It is so challenging and there are so many stresses,” Pickett noted. And this film was very personal.
“I loved Roy so much, and I was happy to include that in the film in a way that was real and authentic. The film was so important to me, and I was relieved that it was moving forward.” Pickett moved in with her uncle, and she said it was very fulfilling for her to be able to care for him and keep him out of a facility.

JOY OF LIFE
The film focuses on the full life Blakey lived, with his years of figure skating and photography. He always carried a camera with him when he was skating and started taking photos of other skaters.
Pickett said that by the time he hung up his skates, he knew he would be a photographer. When he lived in New York, he started photographing actors and dancers and people in the entertainment industry, big names that brought him a reputation.
Pickett has managed to show Blakey’s optimism, exuberance and joy of life through her filming. “He was a very positive person and very quick with a comeback,” she said. She added that although he missed New York, he also loved living in Minnesota. “Friends remember him riding his bike all over,” she said. “He didn’t buy his first car until he was 70.”
Pickett is known not only for her documentaries, but her writing and photography. “They all appeal to me,” she said.
She emphasized again how challenging documentary film making can be. “The films can take years to make and require so much commitment.”
However, she recalled a statement made by Mary Jo Copeland, the long-time activist who has worked for many years serving the poor and homeless and was the subject of a photo book by Pickett.
Copeland said, “We were not put on this earth to take the easy route.”
Pickett said she found such comfort in that.
“I have spent my entire adult life focusing on other people’s stories,” Pickett said. “But I did not recognize the power of documentary film making.”