Bill Carter

Bill Carter (born 1966) is the director of the documentary film "Miss Sarajevo", which consist of amateur video material he shot during his stay in the besieged city of Sarajevo, and author of "Fools Rush In", his memoirs of working for an aid agency during the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Biography

Carter became involved in the Balkan conflict when he was traveling the world after his girlfriend died in a car crash in 1991. He ended up in Split where he joined The Serious Road Trip, a humanitarian aid organization distributing food and medicine to places the United Nations and the Red Cross wouldn't go. Arriving in Sarajevo, he decided to stay with the Sarajevans, inspired by the way Sarajevans tried to maintain the life they had before the siege began. He saw Sarejevo as key because Sarajevans refused to be divided along ethnic lines with many Serbs joining the defence of the city against the Serb nationalist besiegers [Fools Rush In, Bill Carter, p198] . Carter began to do some work for the Sarajevan television, and managed to get an interview with Bono from rock group U2. Bono, who later admitted that he was deeply touched by Bill Carter's story, heard about the importance of pop music in Sarajevo and said that he would love to play in Sarajevo. Carter quickly concluded that this was too dangerous - not least because the large gathering of fans that would assemble might be shelled by the besieging Serb nationalists [Fools Rush In, Bill Carter, p197] . Instead, Carter came up with another way of connecting rock music with Sarajevans; instead of "bringing U2 to Sarajevo" he would "bring Sarajevo to U2", by means of satellite linkups to U2's Zoo TV Tour concerts, giving the people of Sarajevo a chance to tell their story to the world.

In 1995 Bill Carter made the documentary film "Miss Sarajevo" out of the video material he shot. Bono insisted that he would call the film "Miss Sarajevo", after the beauty contest Sarajevans organized during the siege, and wrote a song by the same title as soundtrack to the film. "Miss Sarajevo" won the International Monitor Award, the Golden Hugo Award and the Maverick Director Award, Newport Beach Film Festival.

When in 1997 U2 finally played in Sarajevo, during their PopMart Tour, Bill Carter was in the audience meeting up with the friends he had got to know during the siege [Fools Rush In, Bill Carter, pp315-9] .

Notes

External links

* [http://www.billcarter.cc/ Official website]
* [http://www.tweevandaag.nl/index.php?module=PX_Story&func=view&cid=2&sid=29568# Interview with Bill Carter (video)] - interview on the Dutch TV programme "TweeVandaag" (in English with Dutch subtitles)
* [http://catonthewall.net/billcarter.html Interview on catonthewall.net]