It took five months and 2,200 miles, but siblings Kate and Brandon Imp and their sidekick Emily Ginger - a.k.a. the Ringleader, Monkey, and Lightning - hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail in 2010.

It's taking a similar sort of determination to make and promote Beauty Beneath the Dirt, Kate's feature film of their adventure.

"I've probably put in thousands of hours on this," says Kate, 26, a lawyer in Chicago. "And that's not counting the hike."

The executive producer/director and her brother will be back home in Burlington County this weekend for two screenings, part of a two-month series of 50 buzz-building presentations in theaters and other venues on or near "the AT" between Georgia and Maine.

They hope to find a commercial distributor for the 70-minute movie, which cost $15,000 to make.

"There were a million different stories on the hike," says Kate, who grew up with her brother in Mount Laurel and has long loved the movies and the outdoors. "But at the end of the day, this is the story I wanted to tell."

An exuberant, if occasionally self-dramatizing, mash-up of reality TV, nature documentary, and spiritual quest, the film chronicles the bug bites, intramural fights, and scenic sights the trio of twentysomethings experienced as they hiked northward.

Spoiler alert: Emily has a romance with a bearded hiker nicknamed "Prophet," she and Kate have a painful and perhaps permanent falling-out, and the siblings deepen their bond as the three stride, climb, and, occasionally, dance their way up the mountainous spine of the East Coast.

"None of us had made a long-distance hike before," Kate says. "And I had never made a film before."

That's not evident from the professional sheen of what they're calling BBtD for short; with five pounds of digital gear and a $15 tripod from Target, Kate, the director and camerawoman, captured gorgeous vistas of mountains, lakes, and streams.

Read more from the original source:

Kevin Riordan: At the end of the trail, a movie - and enlightenment