'Bella!' Review: Taking the Fight to the Streets and the House

The jam-packed documentary “Bella!” hustles to chronicle the pioneering political career of the New York congresswoman Bella Abzug.

((FUNNY FUNNY, my 4 year old grand daughter is called Bella! And Bella Ab shared/leased Dad's office space in NY office.))

(Sorry to those who don't have access to NYTimes.)

Jeff L. Lieberman’s biographical documentary “Bella!” churns along at a hectic pace as if hustling to keep up with its subject. Bella Abzug fought ferociously for equal rights and against the Vietnam War in the U.S. Congress, bringing a New Yorker’s tenacity and a plain-spoken dedication to democratic ideals, akin to fellow pioneer Shirley Chisholm.

The child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Abzug began her political path with pamphleteering in childhood, and later drew on organizer-style moxie and a Columbia legal education (defending Willie McGee in a notorious case in Jim Crow Mississippi). But it wasn’t until 1970 that she ran for a congressional seat, beating a longtime incumbent in Manhattan in the primary and kicking off a busy decade of legislative battling.

Lieberman’s starry interviews — from Hillary Clinton to Gloria Steinem to Representative Maxine Waters to the avid Abzug fund-raiser Barbra Streisand — speak to the liberal, feminist revolution of which Abzug was a vital part. Abzug’s own words — drawing on audio diaries — provide the background to her political worldview: as a reaction to the “cocoon approach to living” of the 1950s, as a manifestation of Judaic notions of justice, and as a dedication to equal rights for all, leading to her sponsoring the Equality Act of 1974, intended to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, and sexual orientation.”.>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=TPNlPZ80djQ&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/movies/bella-review-bella-abzug.html