As the lights went down on the cinema and photography soundstage, Mike Kartje watched the summation of his collegiate work flicker on the screen in front of him.

Kartje, a graduate student from Murphysboro studying mass communication and media arts, held a screening Friday of the three films he crafted for his master’s thesis. Each film — “The Armageddon Principle,” “Perkin’s Coal” and “Passed Down” — focuses on different, intense concepts. Kartje made “Armageddon” and “Perkin’s Coal” for MFA classes. He produced “Passed Down” for the thesis, using fellow graduate and undergraduate students as crew and friends as actors, Kartje said.

“The Armageddon Principle” is a film about an American scientist and the Soviet spy charged to abduct him. When the spy learns he will be unable to return home and be reunited with his family, he takes drastic action, Kartje said.

Although “The Armageddon Principle” is the shortest of the three films, Kartje said the movie’s budget was $700, more than double what the other two films cost. The money was mostly used for film and processing, he said.

“The story of ‘Armageddon’ is pure fiction, but I think one could imagine it being possible,” Kartje said. “I came up with the idea from an interest in Cold War-era artwork, posters and propaganda issued by the Soviet Union and the U.S.”

“Perkin’s Coal” is based on a family’s life during a coal miner’s strike. Kartje drew inspiration from the first chtapter of Paul Angle’s “Bloody Williamson,” a book about the 1922 Herrin Massacre. The massacre occurred in Williamson County, after miners went on a strike after discovering it had been operated illegally. When the strike turns violent, a family is torn in their response, he said.

“This story interested me,” Kartje said. “I was compelled to think about that moment when the violence started, and what kind of dramatic possibilities there were in making it into a film.”

Kartje said the film was shot on the cinema and photography soundstage using materials loaned from the Theatre Department and WSIU.

“(The loans) really helped keep costs down,” Kartje said. “Since we were building a set out of stage flats, it saved a tremendous amount of time as well.”

While Kartje shot “Armageddon” on 16mm film, he shot “Perkin’s Coal” on a Canon T4i, he said.

“There weren’t the expenses of film stock and processing,” he said. “Somewhere around $200 was spent, most of that being food for the cast and crew.”

The thesis project “Passed Down” occurs in four separate scenes where three men experience challenges dealing with masculinity and the idea of what it means to be a man, Kartje said.

“This isn’t so much a single story as it is a collection of four stories, in no particular order, about a grandfather, a father and his son,” Kartje said.

Kartje said the subject came up after his father died in 2012. It had a ripple effect that concentrated his focus on what lessons he had learned and which ones he should pass on to his three sons.

“Media, particularly feature films, play a significant role in our social understanding of what it means to be a man,” Kartje said. “My interest here is representing these ideas about masculinity, things like being the breadwinner, the decision-maker and the head-of-household in a way that gives viewers an opportunity to question them in a new way.”

Kartje said he wants to present these masculine concepts in a space where others can critique them.

“I think that “Passed Down” gives viewers an opportunity to think about these relationships in ways that can bring out a new dialogue about it,” Kartje said.

Ryan Todd Freels, a senior from Centralia studying cinema and photography, attended the film presentation and was especially impressed with “Passed Down.”

“I was very pleased by them. I thought he did very interesting plays on gender, especially from a generational standpoint,” Freels said.

Several of Kartje’s actors attended, including Vincent Rhomberg, who starred in both “Perkin’s Coal” and “Passed Down.” Rhomberg said working with Kartje helped him expand his acting abilities from live theater to film.

“My career has been on the stage, musical theatre, so doing films was interesting because you have to (perform) differently,” Rhomberg said. “So I felt a great deal of trust with Mike, it gave me space to know I could do it.”

Jake Saunders can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @saundersfj or by phone at 536-3311 ext. 254.