With her creative talent, Hong Kong student Wong Ying-ying took home the Special Jury Award for her experimental film "We Search" at the 2nd Korea Youth International Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea.

"We Search" is a seven-minute improvised film exploring concepts of gender. A static camera is used to observe the behavior of a young man and woman playing around with bits of old material in an abandoned building, Wong said at an interview with Xinhua on Saturday.

Wong, 24, is in her third year studying for the BA in Creative Media at the School of Creative Media (SCM) of the City University of Hong Kong. She was overwhelmed when she heard about the good news that her work had been awarded the Special Jury Award last month.

"The standard of the works of the contestants in Seoul was really high," she said.

Before the shoot, Wong, the director, asked the actors to do what they wanted in front of the camera.

"I had my actor and actress stayed alone respectively in the same setting where they can do whatever they like, and I would like to see how differently they would behave when being facing the same environment," said she.

As the film unfolds, on 12 split screens, the action is punctuated with comments from interviews with men and women in Hong Kong about their perceptions of gender roles and differences.

Wong said her film was more experimental than other films at the festival in Seoul and that was the key to win recognition from the jury.

The winning work is also well received by Assistant Professor from the SCM Louisa Wei Shiyu, who is also Wong's supervisor.

Wei said that many so-called experimental films by students were often quasi-narrative videos with no stories, while this piece experiments with an interesting idea and presents the idea with a meaningful form that multiplies the direct-cinema visuals with voices from interviews with real people.

The young film maker had been trained as a secretary before she decided to take the plunge and sign up for the BA program.

"Before entering SCM, I worked as a secretary in an advertising company," she said. "I met many creative people there and was heartened by their enthusiasm and efforts in doing productions."

Art-loving Wong gradually found that her job gave little space for her to further exploit her aptitude in art and media, and finally decided to dig into the creative profession full time.

"In the SCM, we learn about a wide variety of different film and video techniques, so we, the students, want to use them in our work to create something original, innovative and fresh," said Wong, showing satisfaction with her studying life.

Speaking about the future, Wong said that she might like to pursue her career in the film industry, and now, her focus is to develop her final-year project.

Editor: Wing