WXXI-TV and WXXI News provide live coverage of President Biden’s State of the Union Address.

2024 State of the Union airs Thursday, March 7 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV + WXXI News.

As he seeks reelection, President Joe Biden will use his State of the Union address to tout his administration’s accomplishments in his first three years in office. Alongside that will likely be a promise: There’s more to come in a second term.

There are multiple crises at home and abroad that could undermine the 46th president’s pitch for another four years in office. The Biden administration has been sharply criticized for its handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, Republicans have stalled Ukraine aid in Congress, and the humanitarian urgency at the southern border means immigration will again play a key role in November’s election.

WXXI-TV presents special coverage from PBS NewsHour. WXXI News presents special coverage from NPR, which can be heard on WXXI-FM 105.9 and online at WXXINews.org.

Photo: President Biden • Credit: Provided by PBS NewHour

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the quintessential American poet-politician.

American Masters: Moynihan premieres Friday, March 29 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

He alone infused public policy with a language, literature, and lyricism that no American public figure in the latter half of the twentieth century could match. American Masters takes a personal look at a public man who was not only an intellectual but also an aesthete who was deeply committed to making an inimitable impact on the world. 

With unprecedented access to the Moynihan archives made available by his family, the film will capture and define a character whose life embodied a quintessential American story. The range of Moynihan’s interests was extraordinary: architecture, urban planning, public works, transportation safety, international diplomacy, government secrecy and above all, an unyielding commitment to creating systemic change for the American underclass. Directed by Joe Dorman.

Caption: Daniel Patrick Moynihan • Credit: WNET/American Masters

Four Midwestern farm families persevere through climate change, industrialization, and mental health crises.

Independent Lens: Greener Pastures premieres Monday, March 25 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

There is a mental health crisis happening for many American farmers. A combination of climate change, the pandemic, and the domination of megafarms have contributed to increasing economic uncertainty and isolation. Following four family farms in the Midwest over several years, the documentary Greener Pastures is a story of perseverance and survival within the farming industry in the heartland.

Caption: Dairy farmer Jay Simeral saws wood at the backdrop of his Adena, Ohio farm as one of his mini blue heelers patiently waits for him to finish. • Credit: Sam Mirpoorian

For nearly four decades, John Coykendall’s passion has been preserving farm heritage – the seeds and stories – of a small, farming culture in Southeastern Louisiana and this work.

Deeply Rooted: John Coykendall’s Journey to Save Our Seeds and Stories airs Monday, March 25 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

John Coykendall is a renowned heirloom seed saver, a classically trained artist, and Master Gardener at Blackberry Farm, one of America’s top resorts. Since 1973, he has made an annual pilgrimage to Louisiana, where he has recorded the oral histories, growing techniques, recipes and folktales of Louisiana farmers and backyard gardeners in more than 80 beautifully illustrated journals. He has saved and safeguarded rare varieties of the crops they once grew, and handed them back to the communities where they came from. “Seeds carry with them more than the potential to sustain people as food, they are living history of the people who cared and tended to them and cultivated them and passed them down. I feel 100-percent total obligation, I am the caretaker,” believes Coykendall. “This is what we’re working to save, this history, the heritage, the way of life, the way of farming, way of cuisine, everything to do needs to be preserved while it’s still here to be preserved.”

A Tennessee native, 73-year-old Coykendall is a true Renaissance man and a celebrity in a growing movement that places a premium on farm-to-table cuisine and locally sourced, organic and heirloom food. He is a classically trained artist, who studied at the Ringling College of Art and Design and studied and worked as an instructor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and he is well-known for his sketches of the pastoral landscape in which he works.

For nearly 20 years, he has been the Master Gardener at one of America’s most celebrated destination resorts, Blackberry Farm, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The 4,200 acre resort, working farm and culinary mecca has been heralded by the world’s most prestigious magazines, including Travel and Leisure, Bon Appetit, Forbes, Vogue, Town & Country, Southern Living, and Garden & Gun among many others.  At Blackberry Farm, John cultivates the property’s seven acres of farmland that supply the resort’s award winning restaurants with fresh from the ground, heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables.

Caption: John Coykendall • Credit: Sarah Weldon

Legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s latest film follows the Troisgros family and their restaurants, Troisgros, Le Central, and Colline de Colombia, located in three neighboring locations in central France.

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros premieres Friday, March 22 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

Much of the film takes place near Roanne at Troisgros, where the present chef, César Troisgros, is the fourth generation of the family to be in charge. Founded 93 years ago, the restaurant has maintained three Michelin stars for 55 years. The film explores the day-to-day operations of this restaurant, from purchasing fresh vegetables at the market, visits to a cheese processing plant, a vineyard, a cattle ranch working on best farming practices, and an organic farmer whose farm, along with the garden of the restaurant, provides organic produce for the restaurants.

The film shows the great artistry, ingenuity, imagination, and hard work of the restaurant staff in creating, preparing, and presenting meals of the highest quality. Characterized by his signature long-form style, Wiseman juxtaposes the choreographed chaos of the kitchen with pastoral shots of the French countryside, resulting in a comprehensive portrait of the Troisgros dynasty. 

Throughout the film, the family’s interest in biodiversity is illustrated in their choice and preparation of their distinctive menu and their efforts to reduce food waste.  Additionally, the collaboration within the Troisgros family is evident as the father, Michel, ponders the transfer of leadership in the kitchen to his son and collaborates with his wife, who runs the hotel, and his other son who runs La Colline de Colombia. 

Photo: The restaurant staff • Credit: Zipporah Films

This two-part film by Ric Burns that chronicles the life, work and legacy of the great 14th century Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, and his epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy concludes tonight!

Dante: Inferno to Paradise concludes Tuesday March 19 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest achievements in the history of Western Literature. The ambition of the film, which combines powerful dramatic reenactments, colorful interviews with renowned scholars, exquisite archival material and scenic filming, is to bring to life and make accessible, to the widest possible audience, the transformative power and beauty of this singular work of art.

Part Two, airing Tuesday, March 19 at 8 p.m. explores Dante’s experience in exile, and his completion of the last two parts of the Comedy, shortly before his death in Ravenna in 1321. Interweaving soaring scenes drawn from Purgatory and Paradise, the film goes on to explore the literary and cultural fate of Dante’s masterpiece from the time of his death down to today. Embracing the entire human community, committed to an egalitarian vision that placed women on an equal footing with men, and determined to communicate to the widest possible audience — Dante wrote his groundbreaking work in a form of vernacular Florentine that would become the basis of the Italian language itself. Centuries later, on these shores, the poem spoke to something deep in the emerging American psyche and soul: the Dante of exile, of freedom and free will. In praise to Dante for blazing a new path for language and literature, one that might serve as a model for American literature itself, Ralph Waldo Emerson declared: “Dante is Italian because at that moment he could most live as an Italian. At this moment, he would be born American.”

Part One aired Monday, March 18 at 8 p.m., explores the historical background of medieval Florence and recounts the dramatic details of Dante’s childhood, education and early literary and political career. Culminating in his exile in 1302 and with his decision to begin “The Divine Comedy” in 1306, the story plunges into Dante’s work. “The Divine Comedy,” begins in the underworld with the Roman poet, Virgil, guides Dante and they meet a vast cohort of historical and mythological figures before arriving at the very bottom of hell and encountering Lucifer himself. Dante wrote at a moment not unlike our own of tremendous upheaval, crisis, doubt and change – as the feudal world crumbled and a new modern one loomed into view – a world beset from without and within by greed, corruption, factionalism and violence, and in which every aspect of the moral, political, social, religious and economic order seemed to be breaking apart. Confronting such a world, Dante chose not to despair but “to portray” what he saw, as scholar Lino Pertile observes, “and to show there is another way.” Seeking to save himself and to save the world, he created a poem that embraced every aspect of the learning, history and art of his time – all the while addressing questions relevant to this day. Is there free will? How can we live a moral life? How should we treat each other?

Photo: Dante Alighieri statue in Santa Croce square in Florence, Italy • Credit: Shutterstock Zvonimir Atletic