Georges Conchon; Acclaimed French Author, Screenwriter

Georges Conchon, a prize-winning author who won an Academy Award in 1976 for a screenplay about the absurdities of black Africans conscripted to fight against each other during World War I, has died.

Family spokesmen said Monday that he had died Sunday in a hospital near Paris at age 65. No other details were released.

Conchon, born in Saint-Avit, France, mixed a varied literary career with long-term government service. From 1960 to 1980, he was secretary of debates at the Senate, the upper chamber of the French Parliament.

His first novel was published in 1953. His 1959 novel “La Corrida de la Victoire” won the Prix des Libraires and his 1964 novel “L’Etat Sauvage” (The Savage State) won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award.

He also wrote scripts for several popular French films and was co-writer of the picture “Black and White in Color” along with Jean-Jacques Annaud, the director. The film, a satirical depiction of colonial life in French West Africa in 1915, won the Oscar for best foreign film.

Conchon was a journalist for the newspaper France-Soir in 1959-60 and served as artistic adviser to the national television channel Antenne 2 after his retirement from the Senate in 1980. He was a member of the governing Socialist Party.