THE SHORE WAY TO SUCCESS? (THE SHORE)

For film buffs a good movie is more than just about the movie itself. 

It's about the experience - the little things that create all the golden memories around a movie.

To this day, I can still recall the vivid details of a magical evening at the cinema when I was six. That was the night I fell in love with film - the night my father, mother, two sisters and I walked on a fine summer's evening from our house to the Grove Cinema to see Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws'.

Hollywood's first proper blockbuster was still packing in audiences at Belfast cinemas almost a year after its release and it was one of the few films I can recall having an interval.

After raving about the movie on the walk home, I had the misfortune of getting a finger accidentally caught in the hinges of a cloakroom door in our house and as I bawled, my dad tried to distract me from the throbbing pain by switching my attention back to the film.

"Robert Shaw wasn't crying when he was eaten by 'Jaws'," he said as he tried to comfort me. 

No, dad, he was roaring in agony.

Another memory I have is of arriving five minutes into a screening of Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in the New Vic with my eldest sister. The two of us contemplated hiding until the next screening so we could catch up on the five minutes we missed. We chickened out, of course.

The first time I went to see Quentin Tarantino's mind blowing 'Reservoir Dogs' was as a student in Norwich. My friend Pete and I went to a wonderful arthouse cinema called Cinema City, while England were playing in a turgid 1-1 World Cup qualifier draw with Norway. We were both bowled over by what we saw.

I remember three screenings of Neil Jordan's 'Michael Collins' in Belfast, Dublin and London - each screening provoking remarkably different reactions.

But one of my most treasured memories is attending an open-air screening of Spike Lee's iffy comedy 'She Hate Me' with my wife at the Venice Film Festival on our honeymoon. The film may have been a disappointment but the screening on that balmy September night was magical.

Another screening that will forever be etched on my brain was at a conference in New York last June in Fordham University.

Organised by Mairtin O Muilleoir's Belfast Media Group, the 'New York, New Belfast' conference brought senior figures from business, education, the arts, sport, the community relations sector and government to Manhattan to brief American politicians, business and civic leaders on the changing face of Belfast and to learn about New York's regeneration.

The venue was the top floor conference room in the Lowenstein Building of Fordham University's Lincoln Center near Central Park, with its magnificent views of the city.

As the sun set on a scorching Manhattan at the end of a hectic opening conference session, Mairtin introduced Oscar nominated screenwriter and director Terry George.

George's pedigree as a filmmaker is beyond dispute.

A long time collaborator with Jim Sheridan, the Belfast man first came to moviegoers' attention as the Oscar nominated co-screenwriter of 'In the Name of the Father'.

He made an assured directorial debut with Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan on the hunger strike drama 'Some Mother's Son' and returned to screenwriting duties for Sheridan and Daniel Day Lewis with the ceasefire drama 'The Boxer'.

George secured further rave reviews as the director of the HBO movie 'A Bright Shining Lie' about the Vietnam War and was the creator of the CBS drama 'The District' about a police commissioner in Washington.

However he cemented his reputation in 2004 by directing 'Hotel Rwanda' which told the gripping story of how Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) saved 1,268 Tutsis from genocide by sheltering them while ethnic cleansing was taking place in the east African state. Its powerful screenplay earned him a second Academy Award nomination.

His follow-up 'Reservation Road', starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mira Sorvino,  Jennifer Connelly and Mark Ruffalo was a taut drama about the tragic aftermath of a car accident. 

However George's bond with his native land was pulling him back as a filmmaker and at that June screening in Manhattan it was clear just how much it meant to him to make 'The Shore' - a short film about overcoming the past and rekindling lost friendships in the post-Troubles era.

The plot is relatively simple. Twenty five years after he fled Northern Ireland for the US at the height of The Troubles, Joe (Ciaran Hinds) makes a tentative return to his home land with his daughter, Patricia (Kerry Condon).

Encouraged by her, he goes back to the Co Down village of Killough to be reunited with his boyhood friend Paddy (Conleth Hill) who has since married Joe's former fiancé, Mary (Maggie Cronin).

Torn apart and estranged by events 25 years earlier, both friends must confront the past but also whether they can resurrect their friendship after years of separation.

George told the audience in Manhattan how thrilled he was not only to work alongside his daughter Oorlagh, who co-produced the short film, but to collaborate with a Northern Ireland cast and crew.

So impressed was he that he returned to Belfast to make the comedy 'A Whole Lotta Sole' about a botched fish market robbery with Brendan Fraser, Colm Meaney, David O'Hara and Martin McCann.

But he also signalled his aspirations for 'The Shore' by encouraging the New York, New Belfast audience to spread the word and help them make it to the Oscars.

That dream has been realised for what is a beautifully shot, skilfully written and wonderfully acted short film which should now deservedly get wider exposure in cinemas, on TV and on iTunes.

Watch out for a particularly funny scene of mistaken identity in one sequence on the Killough shore.

Can 'The Shore' go one step further than Michael Creagh's Northern Ireland produced short film 'The Crush' which landed an Oscar nomination last year? Or Tim Loane's touching Riverdance-inspired 'Dance Lexie Dance' which was Academy Award nominated in 1996?

Maybe but among those standing in its way is Irish actor Peter McDonald's 'Pentecost' - the tale of a Liverpool FC-mad altar boy, desperate to see his team in the 1977 European Cup Final.

Win or lose, George's short film has already a made lasting impression on those who have seen it at film festivals in Palm Springs, Sarajevo, Derry and Rhode Island but especially on those who were privileged to see it on that wonderfully hot June night in Manhattan.