By the time he reached his golden years, Roy Blakey had amassed the world’s foremost collection of ice show memorabilia, a trove valued in the millions of dollars. But he wasn’t just a collector – he was also a participant in a famed ice extravaganza – Holiday on Ice – in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Blakey’s career on ice, his collecting passion, and his second act as a pioneering photographer of male nudes, queer icons, and celebrities comes into focus in the documentary Uncle Roy, directed by Blakey’s niece, Keri Pickett. The film premieres Thursday at the prestigious Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece in the Open Horizons section. Director-producer Pickett, producer-editor Dawn Mikkelson, and Kickstarter producer Kim Mahling are attending the festival in support of the film.

“Built on nine decades of professional and personal archives, Uncle Roy follows the extraordinary life of globe-traveling-skater turned photographer Roy Blakey,” notes a synopsis. “Born in Oklahoma in 1930, Roy dreamed of performing on ice. He began collecting figure skating programs and photographs, a collection that expanded over his lifetime to 44,000 items, including posters, costumes, and so much more. This love of figure skating also led Roy to a career in theatrical skating, performing globally with Holiday on Ice before becoming a photographer in New York.”

Pickett didn’t get to know her uncle until she moved to New York City as an adult, pursuing her dream of becoming a professional photographer. “As their lives converge, a friendship begins,” the synopsis shares. The bond become so close over the decades that eventually Pickett assumed the role of her uncle’s caregiver after he began to experience symptoms of dementia.

“Roy Blakey inspired me in countless ways. As a photographer, filmmaker, and independent artist, I learned how to see the world by watching Roy Blakey,” Pickett writes. “The film belongs to a lineage of intimate, first-person American independent documentaries — Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter (1994), Last Flight Home (2022), and A Photographic Memory (2024) — works that place family, memory, and care at the emotional center of cinema.

“Roy directly inspired my first feature, The Fabulous Ice Age (2014, Netflix), a film about a century of dancing on ice and one man’s quest to save its history. I initially hoped that chronicling a century of ice shows, performers, and their entrepreneurs with Roy’s archive would be enough to secure a permanent home for his collection. When that didn’t happen, I kept filming.”

Pickett continues, “The urgency of the preserving Roy’s legacy deepened as hallucinatory dementia entered our lives and I became his 24/7 caregiver. Focusing on elder care and the end of life are subjects I’ve explored throughout my career, but with Uncle Roy I reveal my heart in a way I have never done. This film intimately documents the beautiful last years of our life together.”

In addition to Thursday’s world premiere at the festival’s Stavros Tornes venue, Uncle Roy will screen Friday at the Makedonikon. The filmmaker playfully blends “rich archival material, interviews with people recounting their experiences alongside him, and, of course, the stories of 93-year-old Blakey himself as his memory declines,” TiDF comments. The festival writes that Pickett’s fourth feature film presents “a rhythmic, tender, lovable, and unapologetically queer portrait of the man and artist that decisively shaped her own trajectory.”

Uncle Roy is a production of Pickett Pictures and Emergence Pictures. The film is directed and produced by Keri Pickett and produced and edited by Dawn Mikkelson. Cinematography is by Pickett, with additional cinematography by Mikkelson and others. Me-Lee Hay composed the score. Marc Smolowitz serves as consulting producer; Doug Blush serves as consulting editor. Executive producers include B.J. French, Charles W. Leslie, and Rocco Lofaro Buonpane.

The Film Collaborative is handling worldwide sales of Uncle Roy.

“My uncle, Roy Blakey, would be over the moon to know that his story is launching at Thessaloniki,” Pickett says. “Roy circled the globe twice as a theatrical skater. He believed deeply in living boldly and fully. ‘If you can see it, you can be it’ wasn’t just a phrase — it was how he moved through the world.”