Panama City (Spanish: Ciudad de Panamá) is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of Panama. The city is the political and administrative center of the country, and a hub for international banking and commerce. It is considered a Beta World City.

With an average GDP per capita of $11,700, Panama has been among the top five places for retirement in the world, according to International Living magazine.^{[citation needed]} Panama City has a dense skyline of mostly highrise buildings, and it is surrounded by a large belt of tropical rainforest. Panama's Tocumen International Airport, the largest and busiest airport in Central America, offers daily flights to major international destinations.

Panama City was chosen to be the American Capital of Culture for 2003 (jointly, with Curitiba, Brazil).^{[citation needed]}

Panama was founded on August 15, 1519 by Spanish conquistador Pedro Arias Dávila. The city was the starting point of expeditions that conquered the Inca Empire in Peru. It was a stopover point of one of the most important trade routes in the history of the American continent leading to the fairs of Nombre de Dios and Portobelo, where most of the gold and silver that Spain took from the Americas passed through. The city was destroyed by a devastating fire, when the pirate Henry Morgan sacked it on January 28, 1671. It was rebuilt and formally established on January 21, 1673 in a peninsula located 8 km from the original settlement. The place where the previously devastated city was located is still in ruins, and has become a tourist attraction known as "Panama Viejo".

Panama (ⁱ/ˈpænəmɑː/ PAN-ə-mah; Spanish: Panamá), officially the Republic of Panama (Spanish: República de Panamá [reˈpuβlika ðe panaˈma]), is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The capital is Panama City. Explored and settled by the Spanish in the 16th century, Panama broke with Spain in 1821 and joined a union of Nueva Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela, named the Republic of Gran Colombia.When Gran Colombia the dissolved in 1831, Panama and Nueva Granada remained joined. Nueva Granada later became the Republic of Colombia.

With the backing of the United States, Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, allowing the Panama Canal to be built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1904 and 1914. In 1977, an agreement was signed for the complete transfer of the Canal from the United States to Panama by the end of the century.

Harmony Korine (born January 4, 1973) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author.

He is best known for writing Kids, and for directing Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. His film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at CPH:DOX in November 2009. As of March 2012, Korine's project Spring Breakers was under production in Florida.

Korine was born in Bolinas, California to Eve and Sol Korine and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Sol produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colourful Southern characters" and taught Korine how to use a Bolex camera. As a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films and took him to see Even Dwarfs Started Small in the theater. Korine reminisces, "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so powerful." Korine spent his childhood in Nashville, attending Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. Korine also spent some time living with his parents in a commune, which helped to inspire the commune setting of Mister Lonely. As a teenager, Korine frequented revival theaters, watching classic films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine briefly mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.