Simon Bussbaum's a film junkie without a cause, a spiritual drifter looking for light in the days of Watergate-days of social tensions, cultural turmoil, and criminal conspiracies in high places. His burning bush appears in the form of City of Emeralds, a McCarthy-era, feminist-tinged reenactment of a triumphant New Mexico miners' strike.

Inspired, he flees Queens for the sulfur haze of a copper smelter, eager to join Naldo Galvan, the real-life strike leader and star of the film, on American workers' march to the promised land of liberty and justice for all.

But not every burning bush, it turns out, is a message from God.