Casandra Stark

American experimental filmmaker, writer, actress, director, painter and vocalist (b. 1964, New Haven, Connecticut). Casandra Stark is widely regarded as one of the icons of the "Cinema of Transgression" and "No Wave" movements. She directed two critically-acclaimed short films in the mid-to-late 1980s and starred in several Richard Kern's movies and one of Nick Zedd's shorts. Casandra was also active as a vocalist of Menace Dement band. In later years, she was known as Casandra Stark Mele, adopting her real family name (which means "apples" in Italian). Casandra grew up in Wallingford, Connecticut. In addition to her artistic career, she spent many years working with mentally-disabled people in New York's Lower East Side. She appeared in Jack Sargeant's Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression book, first published in 1995 by Creation Books and reprinted by Soft Skull Press.