Casandra Stark Mele was a principal director and actor in the No wave cinema movement referred to as

Cinema of Transgression __notoc__ The Cinema of Transgression is a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe a New York City–based underground film movement, consisting of a loose-knit group of artists using shock value and black humor in their films. Key players ...

. She made all her films in the 1980s and early 1990s under the name Casandra Stark.Sabin, Roger 1999. ''Punk Rock: So What?; The Cultural Legacy of Punk'' Since then, she has added her real family name Mele to her professional name.

Life and work

Casandra grew up in

Wallingford, Connecticut Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, centrally located between New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford, and Boston and New York City. The town is part ...

with the first name Rosanne. She is currently a dramatic vocalist and live performer as well as a painter and film maker. Her films often featured the music of one of her bands, such as Menace Dement and/or The Trees, a duo with guitarist and political scientist

Frank Morales Frank Morales is an Episcopal priest and activist in New York City. Morales was born in 1949 and grew up in the Jacob Riis Houses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father was Puerto Rican and his mother was Peruvian. He first became inv ...

with whom Casandra has a child named Frankie. Her film ''The Anarchists'' was aired on Manhattan Cable Television in 1992 and features the music of

Missing Foundation Missing Foundation Is an industrial music and performance art project active in the late 1980s - present and led by Peter Missing. Their live shows were notorious for sparking civil disobedience (including the occasional riot) and causing seri ...

. It was partly filmed in

Naples, Italy Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

(A city she refers to as Napoli) as well as New York. Her film ''Parades of Crazy'' ranges from very surrealistic images of people marching slowly through a park wearing masks to a beach scene in black and white of Casandra herself and her friend Laura May wearing white gowns and splashing in the waves and floating in the tide. Most of her films do not feature Casandra herself, however. She starred in the title role of her ''Death of an Arabian Woman'' film. She has authored six

chapbook A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...

s, one of which, ''Your World Not Mine,'' chronicles events in her life growing up an

epileptic Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by a tendency for recurrent, unprovoked seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activity in the brain that can cause a variety of symptoms, rang ...

. She has dedicated her talents to working with mentally challenged of the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it w ...

promoting creative outlets such as ''Coocooloco: An Anthology Of Creative Writings From The So-Called Mentally Ill'' and ''The Lower East Side And Beyond'', a collection of

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

. She went on to become a

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

teacher in New York.

Footnotes

References

* Sabin, Roger 1999. ''Punk Rock: So What?; The Cultural Legacy of Punk'' *

External links

Casandra Stark Mele Official Web Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stark, Casandra Living people Film directors from Connecticut American women film directors Punk filmmakers Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women Women in punk

Life and work

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links