Biography

Mirkine ? It's a name, engraved in the legend of cinema. And it's a superb production, the work of Leo and his son, Yves ‘Siki' Mirkine.
The Mirkine saga begins in 1910 in Kiev, Ukraine. Nine years later, uprooted by the October revolution, Leo moves to Nice with his family. He graduates in architecture then enters the world of cinema through the backdoor. At first, he is only an extra but he rapidly stands out, with his extraordinary personality and charisma. He becomes a set-designer assistant, then an on-set photographer, a bygone noble craft.
Together, Leo and Yves Mirkine built a collection of photographs with no equivalent around the world. They were the irreplaceable witnesses of a great era of French cinema. Inspired, they explored the rich hours of the Cannes Film Festival, ever since it was created in 1946.
The two Mirkine men lived and made it possible for others to live the shooting of over one hundred and fifty movies. They took pictures from all of Christian-Jaque's films, from the ones made in the thirties to the bouncing Fanfan la Tulipe. They took pictures from many other movies that, ever since, became major classics. To name a few : Un carnet de bal by Julien Duvivier, J'accuse by Abel Gance, Les Diaboliques by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Et Dieu... créa la Femme by Roger Vadim and Le Testament d'Orphée by Jean Cocteau.

Leo and Yves Mirkine, it's a whole century of cinema, one hundred years that we can enjoy today, thanks to Stephane their heiress.