Pop Goes The News — Production of a feature film about the life of Irish singer Joe Heaney is about to begin in Montreal.

Filming of Song of Granite recently wrapped in Heaney’s native Connemara on the west coast of Ireland.

The biopic, a co-production with Quebec’s Amérique Film, is being made in black-and-white.

Several Irish actors are portraying Heaney at various ages.

Song of Granite is being directed by Pat Collins, who is best known as a documentary filmmaker. He co-wrote the screenplay with Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride and Sharon Whooley.

Heaney — known as Joe Éinniú — famously wrote more than 500 songs from the time he was a teenager until his death in 1984 at the age of 64.

Although born and raised in Ireland, he spent time in England in the 1950s and ‘60s before deciding to settle in New York City shortly after performing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

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Heaney was the first non-American to be awarded funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.

He spent his last two years as artist-in-residence at Seattle’s University of Washington.

An annual festival is held in his honour in his hometown of Carna in County Galway.

Last year’s Oscar-nominated film Brooklyn starring Saoirse Ronan was also partly shot in Montreal.