I would like to congratulate one of our scriptwriting and filmmaking mentors, Armando 'Bing' Lao, and company, for their movie 'Serbis' which got into the Competition Category of the ongoing 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Bing is the screenwriter of this feature helmed by Director Dante 'Brillante' Mendoza.

Last month, June 17, 2007, I, together with seven other students, graduated from Armando 'Bing' Lao's Advanced Scriptwriting Class held by the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI). For six weeks starting, April 28, every Saturday and Sunday from 1pm to 6pm, we sweated it out, learning Bing's new methods and writing and submitting exercises in the hope that these lessons would make us better scriptwriters.