About

At the age of ten, I had dinner with John Waters. And that basically explains everything.

My name is Joe Ziemba. I’m a designer, author, video editor, film programmer, and musician. I’m the Creative Director of the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) in Austin, TX. I’m also the founder of Bleeding Skull, the co-author and designer of BLEEDING SKULL! A 1980s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY (Headpress, 2013), and the co-author of BLEEDING SKULL! A 1990s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY (Fantagraphics, 2021). Over the years, I’ve been a janitor, librarian, full-time musician, and advertising industry drop-out. As a film programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse, I’ve hosted and programmed the weekly horror series Terror Tuesday in Austin for over a decade, and created and programmed Video Vortex, a monthly series that celebrates direct-to-video genre films from the fringes. I’ve also shepherded Dismember the Alamo, an annual horror movie marathon that took place at nearly twenty theater locations across the country for almost ten years.

In other news, my favorite ice cream flavor is Original Rainbow Cone. I live for movies, comic books, music, and halftones. One of my long term goals is to watch every movie starring Corey Haim . . . including DREAM A LITTLE DREAM 2. Wish me luck!