Impact Films Produced by Trailbound Sketches
Glacier Speak: Listening to Matanuska
A KEEN Effect Film
A sketch of an Alaskan glacier sends watercolor artist Max Romey on a journey to find where his grandmother stood four decades ago. While trying to make the same sketch in the same place with the same materials – with only one page to guide him – he discovers that the glacier is trying to show him an even bigger picture.
Glacier Speak : Listening to Matanuska World Premiered November 21, 2025 at Kendal Mountainfilm Festival
My Grandmother's Sketchbook | UNDER MONT BLANC
All it took was a few simple sketches from Max Romey’s Grandmother's sketchbook to lead him on a generational scavenger hunt halfway across the world.
The goal: To find and sketch from the exact spot where she stood all those years ago under Mont Blanc and make the same sketch in the same spot.
Max’s Grandmother (Lu) taught him how to paint when he was young and growing up with Dyslexia, it helped him find his voice through watercolor. But now the only way he can sketch with her again is to find where these sketches were made in a shifting alpine environment. With the help of record setting alpinist and tenacious plant enthusiast Hillary Gerardi, they head in search of the sketches from the top of the Aiguille du Midi to the toe of Mer De Glace. But the lesson they find is far more colorful than any sketchbook could hold.
My Grandmother's Sketchbook | UNDER MONT BLANC is currently screening exclusively through the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour. To find a screening near you, please visit HERE for more information.
A Little Story About Forever
A KEEN Effect Film
This award-winning short film about forever unfolds from the POVs of father (max) and son (kip) as they attempt to write a book about what forever means. The father feels overwhelmed by all of the threats to forever, like forever chemicals, and calls an unlikely hero – Mark Ruffalo – to ask for help seeing the big picture.
A Little Story About Forever Premiered at Outside Film Festival in May of 2025.
My Grandmother’s Sketchbook
"My Grandmother's Sketchbook" is a documentary short showcasing the creative persistence and grit of filmmaker Max Romey as he retraces the footsteps of his late grandmother, Lucretia Leonard Romey. Lucretia was an award-winning artist, and Max embarks on a journey to find the specific locations captured in her sketchbook from over 50 years ago.
Our film invites viewers on an adventure, witnessing Max's dedication to connecting with the people, places and things that inspired his grandmother. A journey that evokes a sense of wonder and curiosity, highlighting how the passage of time has impacted these locations and the enduring power of art, memory and community.
My Grandmother’s Sketchbook World Premiered at Mountainfilm Festival May 26, 2025.
Footprints on Katmai
A KEEN Effect Film
Inspired by the sketches in his late grandmother's sketchbooks, artist and filmmaker Max Romey retraces her travels to the remote beaches of Katmai, Alaska. There he joins a group of marine debris experts and discovers there's a lot of people making footprints on Katmai without ever visiting.
Footprints on Katmai World Premiered at Mountainflm Festival May, 2024.