Bella! (Closing Night)

Closing Night

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and director Jeff L. Lieberman expected to attend

As women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, and Katie Porter battle on the front line of an increasingly bifurcated democracy, they tread on the footpath laid by Bella Abzug. Known for her colorful chapeaus and for a voice, as Norman Mailer said that, “could boil the fat off of a taxicab driver’s neck,” “Battling Bella” came out swinging at the old guard even as a child. Defying her Jewish Orthodox community by saying Kaddish for her father as a 13-year-old girl, “It was in those early days…that I probably got my first ideas about feminism.” A lawyer who specialized in civil rights and labor law, she was a founder of the women’s rights movement, spearheaded campaigns against nuclear testing and the war in Vietnam, all before becoming the first woman elected to congress on a women’s rights and peace platform. Indefatigable, Azbug’s career spanned 65 years, a 42 year marriage and 2 daughters. Using never before seen home movies, audio diaries, news footage and new interviews from Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, Lily Tomlin, Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Marlo Thomas, family members, and colleagues, documentarian Jeff L. Lieberman gives an entertaining and comprehensive look at Abzug’s astonishing legacy fighting on behalf of women, the working class, communities of color and the LGBT.