WATERVILLE – Matt Tyler, 17, is fascinated with history. The soon-to-be Old Town High School senior also loves making movies. Last year, he combined the two and made a 16-minute film about the Cuban missile crisis as a project for Spanish class.

The Old Town teen-ager’s movie “The Brink of War” was one of three winners in the Senior Division of the 24th annual Student Film and Video Festival. Tyler and his filmmaking partner Mitchell Wark, 16, picked up their award Saturday at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.

“It’s an honor,” Tyler said Monday about winning the award. “It shows me that this is something I should be considering and pursuing as a career. It also tells me that filmmaking is something I really am good at.”

Chas Bruns, 18, of Bangor and a recent graduate of Bangor High School, turned to snowboarding, a sport he knows well, when he had to make a film for a theater arts class. Bruns’ “The Art of Impact” was a finalist in the Senior Division. It was his fifth film, shot with a digital camera and edited on his desktop computer.

“The Art of Impact” has no dialogue, but the music of Rage Against the Machine, A Tribe Called Quest and other popular groups pulsated as snowboarders skied up ramps and across railings, somersaulted in the air, and sailed off snowy cliffs to land effortlessly on ski slopes at Sugarloaf.

“It took about four months to make this,” Bruns said Monday. “The toughest part was getting the camera and the tripod up on the mountain, then shooting in the cold and wind. The editing was pretty fun except when the computer froze. That’s frustrating.”

Bruns will attend Colorado University at Boulder in the fall. There, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, he will combine his love of snowboarding and movies, with a practical eye to a future medical career. Bruns plans a double major in microbiology and filmmaking.

The Maine Student Film and Video Festival began in the late 1970s with the rise of the independent filmmaker, according to filmmaker James Coleman of Portland. Known professionally as Huey, he often works as an artist-in-residence at school, working with pupils in kindergarten through grade six. He organizes the festival each year, but does not judge the entries.

“We stress originality,” said Huey. “We want to recognize young Maine filmmakers who are trying to find their own voices, especially those who are working totally on their own and taking artistic risks. The films are judged on originality, content, style and technical skills. We put the technical criteria last because we don’t want to penalize students with few resources.”

Twenty-one of the 42 films entered in this year’s competition received awards, according to Huey. They ranged in subject matter from fables to Greek classics to documentaries to original dramas. Students used many of the same techniques and followed some of the same trends popular in Hollywood, but on a smaller scale, he observed.

Tyler said that while “Thirteen Days,” Kevin Costner’s film about the Cuban missile crisis, was released in January, shooting for his movie was completed in early December. Tyler said that he and Wark researched the crisis but did not see any films on the subject.

The Old Town teen added that he is shooting a new film this summer.

“This one is a fictional story about a political scandal that involves an oil company that’s allowed to drill in a forest,” he explained. “When an environmental protester is murdered, a reporter investigates and uncovers a lot of corruption. …The hardest part is scheduling a time when everybody can get together, but shooting and editing are pretty fun.”

Other films honored at the festival include “The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant,” made by Cathy Johnson’s film class at Washington Academy in East Machias. The film was a finalist in the Senior Division. “Prometheus Bound,” by Kal-El Bogdanove and students at Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro, was a Senior Division winner.