Valparaíso (/ˌvælpəˈraɪzoʊ/, Spanish: [balpaɾaˈiso]) is a city and commune of Chile, center of its third largest conurbation (Greater Valparaíso) and one of the country's most important seaports; it is an increasingly important cultural center in the Southwest Pacific hemisphere. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Province and the Valparaíso Region. Although Santiago is Chile's official capital, the National Congress of Chile was established in Valparaíso in 1990.

Valparaíso played an important geopolitical role in the second half of the 19th century, when the city served as a major stopover for ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by crossing the Straits of Magellan. Always a magnet for European immigrants, Valparaíso mushroomed during its golden age, when the city was known by international sailors as “Little San Francisco” and “The Jewel of the Pacific.”

Examples of Valparaíso’s former glory include Latin America’s oldest stock exchange, the continent’s first volunteer fire department, Chile’s first public library, and the oldest Spanish language newspaper in continuous publication in the world. The opening of the Panama Canal and reduction in ship traffic dealt a staggering blow to Valparaíso, though the city has staged an impressive renaissance in recent years.

Eva Ayllón (born February 6, 1956 as María Angélica Ayllón Urbina), a composer and singer, is one of Peru's foremost Afro-Peruvian musicians, and one of the country's most enduring stars.

Ayllón adopted the stage "Eva" from her maternal grandmother, Eva, who began teaching the young María music at an early age. As a child and teen, Eva Ayllón sang in school competitions and later on television and radio. Throughout the early 1970s, Eva appeared in many música criolla musical groups such as Rinconcito Monsefuano, La peña de los Ugarte, Los Mundialistas o Callejón and Los Kipus. By 1975, Eva began to pursue a solo singing career, touring internationally by 1979. In 1989, Eva formed Los Hijos del Sol (Children of the Sun), a supergroup made up of Peruvian musical stars in an effort to promote Peruvian music through performance and recording.

Eva Ayllón was born María Angélica Ayllón Urbina on February 7, 1956, adopting the name "Eva" after her maternal grandmother who initiated her in vocalization at the age of three. Within a few years, she was singing at school, youth competitions and later, on television and radio. In the early 70s she began to appear in many of the local “peñas criollas”, a gathering of musician friends, and began to define herself as one of the leading interpreters of Peru’s Música Criolla.

Pharrell Williams (born April 5, 1973), commonly known simply as Pharrell, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, composer, and fashion designer. Williams and Chad Hugo make up the record production duo The Neptunes, producing hip hop and R&B music. He is also the lead vocalist and drummer of hip-hop band N.E.R.D, which he formed with Hugo and childhood friend Shay Haley. He released his first single "Frontin'" in 2003 and followed up with his first album In My Mind in 2006.

As part of The Neptunes, Williams has produced numerous hit singles for various musicians. The two have earned three Grammy Awards amongst ten nominations. He is also the co-founder of the clothing brands Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream Clothing. He is a member of the supergroup V.A. Playaz with Fam-Lay, Clipse, Skillz, Missy Elliott, and Timbaland & Magoo.

Pharrell Williams was born on April 5, 1973, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the eldest of three sons of Carolyn, a teacher, and Pharaoh Williams, a handyman. He met Chad Hugo in a seventh-grade summer band camp where Williams played the keyboards and drums and Hugo played tenor saxophone. They were also both members of a marching band; Williams played the snare drum while Chad was student conductor. With Hugo, Williams attended Princess Anne High School where they played in the school band; there he got the name Skateboard P.

Joris Ivens (18 November 1898, Nijmegen – 28 June 1989, Paris) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and committed communist.

Born Georg Henri Anton Ivens into a wealthy family, Ivens went to work in one of his father's photo supply shops and from there developed an interest in film. He completed his first film at 13; in college he studied economics with the goal of continuing his father's business, but an interest in class issues distracted him from that path. He met photographer Germaine Krull in Berlin in 1923, and entered into a marriage of convenience with her between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."

Originally his work focused on technique - some argue that it had that focus at the cost of relevance, especially in Rain (Regen, 1929), a 10-minute short filmed over 2 years which features impressive cinematography and a number of 'characters' but no information about them aside from what was visible, and in The Bridge (De Brug, 1928), which showed a frank admiration of engineering and also featured a number of "characters" but again did not give any information about them. Around this time he was involved in the creation of the Filmliga based in Amsterdam which drew foreign filmmakers to Holland such as Alberto Cavalcanti, René Clair, Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov who also became his friends.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal colour of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.