Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is a British filmmaker, a composer, and a Naqshbandi Sufi teacher. Emmanuel is the son of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a Sufi mystic and lineage successor in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order.
Biography
Vaughan-Lee attended Berklee College of Music in Boston to pursue musical studies in improvisation and composition. After graduating from Berklee in 2001, Vaughan-Lee performed and recorded with numerous artists including Mary Stallings, Lionel Loueke, Dayna Stephens, Ferenc Nemeth, Rhiannon and Ambrose Akinmusire. He recorded and released two albums under his own name – Previous Misconceptions and Borrowed Time. He has directed and produced numerous films and virtual reality experiences that have played at festivals including: New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival Thessalonioki Documentary Film Festival, Hot Docs, San Francisco IntlFilm Festival and Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. His films have been featured and distributed on PBS, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Outside, Within, and exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum and London Barbican. In 2012, Vaughan-Lee's debut feature film, Elemental, made its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Variety called the film "inspiring". The New York Times wrote the following review about Elemental – "This sensitively scored film complicates the typical missionary's progress arc by acknowledging its would-be heroes' weaknesses and the day-to-day obstacles to doing good." The film went on to play at more than 50 film festivals internationally with theatrical distribution handled by The Film Collaborative. and digital and non theatrical by Cinema Guild. In collaboration with composer H. Scott Salinas, he composed music for his films Elemental and . In 2013, Vaughan-Lee's documentary exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was also featured in National Geographic. In 2014, Vaughan-Lee's documentaries and were featured on The New York Times Op-Docs. His documentary Soleá was featured in The New Yorker. In 2016, Vaughan-Lee produced which premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, and was featured in National Geographic. In 2017, Vaughan-Lee's virtual reality film premiered at the New York Film Festival, and in 2018, it was selected to screen at a number of festivals worldwide, including SXSW Film Festival, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Telluride Mountainfilm, AFI DOCS, and was nominated for the VR Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest. In April 2018, Vaughan-Lee's Film Earthrise premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won the Audience Award at AFI DOCS. and was nominated for an Emmy in the short documentary category. The film was distributed by PBS's POV and The New York Times Op-Docs. In March 2019, Vaughan-Lee's virtual reality film premiered at SXSW Film Festival, and was nominated for the VR narrative award at Sheffield Doc/Fest. He is currently the executive editor of Emergence Magazine, a National Magazine Award nominated and Webby winning online publication with an annual printed edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture and spirituality.
