Improbable pairs was filmed in San Franciso in the fall of 1999 by a volunteer crew of television and media professionals. When Improbable Pairs began taking shape as an idea, we started asking people if they had ever heard stories about people who had made peace against extraordinary odds. We particularly tried to contact and ask people in places where social forces worked to push people apart: South Africa, Rwanda, Lebanon, Vietnam, Kosovo, Northern Ireland. As we listened, we began gradually to hear stories that were simply extraordinary. For example:

• Two women in Rwanda, one Hutu one Tutsi, who both lost their entire families in the genocide, have opened an orphanage together.
• Reconciliation work going on in Northern Ireland, where the young childern of Protestant and Catholic gunmen play together in a pre-school, while their mothers get to know one another.
• A former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a black activist who have become deep friends.
• A World War II Allied POW who has met and become friends witht the Japanese man who was his prison camp guard 50 years ago in Burma.

Many of these stories will be the subject of futher segments in the series.

 

One of the things that we think makes this series so powerful is that it is about human relationship. We all know stories about extraordinary individuals - people who have done worthy, even heroic things. What we wanted particularly to focus on in this series was the heroism of relationship - the fact that out beyond right and wrong, beyond horrendous suffering, there are people in this world who will not give up seeing each other as human beings.