Singeli Agnew is a producer/director and freelance cinematographer based in San Francisco. Her subjects have included everything from migratory beekeepers to drug addicts, and she has gained recognition for covering difficult issues with sensitivity, commitment and artistry. She has worked as a cinematographer on documentary films in remote and diverse locales - deep in the jungles of Uganda, homeless squats in Hollywood, and on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific.
Singeli was raised on a sheep ranch in Montana, and began her career as a photojournalist covering local politics and the environment for award-winning community newspapers in the American west. After a decade as a photographer, she returned to school, earning a master’s degree from UC-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism where she studied with Jon Else and Michael Pollan. She produced and directed the first documentary film to look at the phenomena of bees and industrialized pollination. The 26-minute film, "Pollen Nation", won a variety of awards, screened at festivals across the US and Europe, and has been translated into several languages. It continues to play in community halls across the country. Singeli also received the prestigious "Best of the West" newspaper award for her feature-length magazine article on the pollination industry, "The Almond & The Bee" for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Since then she has reported from Nepal, India, France, Uganda and across the United States on a wide range of social and scientific issues. Her camera work has been featured in broadcasts for PBS, HBO, National Geographic, and Al Jazeera-English as well as numerous independent films. Singeli was the Associate Producer for the Academy-Award nominated documentary "The Conscience of Nhem En", and went on to work as a co-producer with director Steven Okazaki on two additional projects on homelessness and drug addiction.
Singeli studied creative writing and literature at Colorado College, and spent a year and a half in Nepal, where she studied Nepalese and led treks in the Himalayas.