Student filmmaker John Daniel Amato has long had a passion for documentary film, so when his professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts told him about the New York Living History Project’s Independent Short Film Contest, he jumped at the opportunity to apply.

“I’m interested in using film to document the world, some story, some emotion,” he said.

His passion was rewarded: Mr. Amato was a finalist in the New York Living History Project, a first-time collaboration between the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and the Independent Features Film Festival.

The project aims to counter common images of hospice care by documenting the lives of hospice patients throughout New York City. VNSNY Hospice Care, which serves 530 patients a day, paired each contestant with a patient to create a five-minute film about the patient’s life. The films consist mostly of one-on-one interviews between filmmaker and hospice patient, with each short serving as a brief portrait of a patient’s life.

College-age filmmakers from New York City were eligible for the contest. Thirteen submitted films, and the finalists were selected by popular vote online.

Following a screening at the second annual Independent Features Film Festival at Tribeca Cinema last week, a panel of judges selected David Broyles’s “The Shopkeeper’s Daughter: Interview with Dorothy Kohl” as the winner, awarding him a $10,000 grand prize to be used toward his education. Runner-up Martin Toro received the Hospice Choice Award, which included an Avid film editing machine valued at $2,500.

“We wanted to focus on the quality of life of our patients, rather than the end of life,” the executive director of VNSNY Hospice Care, Jeanne Dennis, said.

“When I first heard about the project, I loved it,” the president of the Independent Features Film Festival, Philip Nelson, said. “There is so much we can learn from people through film. To give New York film students the opportunity to capture the stories of VNSNY hospice patients was priceless.”

Independent Features is among the first film festivals to select its films solely through online voting, a selection process that gives voice to a younger audience, Mr. Nelson, who founded the festival in 2006, said.

VNSNY provides an average of two months of symptom management care to each hospice patient, Ms. Dennis said. The film contest commemorates the 25th anniversary of VNSNY Hospice Care, whose educational programs and awareness initiatives tend to attract a professional, rather than a student, audience. By reaching out to student filmmakers, Ms. Dennis, who has worked with the nonprofit for 11 years, sought to foster an “intergenerational connection” that would be “instructive and stimulating to both.”

Mr. Broyles, the grand prize winner, called the project “eye-opening.” His film re-creates a day in 1932 when hospice patient Dorothy Kohl worked in her father’s buttonhole-making shop. Narrated by Ms. Kohl, the film consists of period footage and re-enactments of Ms. Kohl’s interactions with her Yiddish-speaking father.

“We wanted to pick one memory, to make it stand alone with a beginning, middle, and end,” Mr. Broyles, a first-year film student at Columbia University School of the Arts, said. “I enjoy connecting with another generation. She was a great storyteller.”

Mr. Broyles will split his prize with Morgan Faust, producer, and Bryan Parker, director of photography.