A feature film sponsored by NYU Langone Orthopedics, On the Shoulders of Giants: The History of NYU Langone Orthopedics, has been chosen to screen in the 23rd Tribeca Festival as an official selection of the 2024 Tribeca X Award competition.

On the Shoulders of Giants captures NYU Langone Orthopedics’ leadership in innovation and research, upholding a world-class legacy of orthopedic care. The film also highlights the department’s place in the history of New York City and its commitment to gender, racial, and cultural diversity.

NYU Langone Orthopedics will host a private viewing of the film on June 12 at the Tribeca Screening Room after the winners of Tribeca X are announced at the awards ceremony, to be held the day before at Convene One Liberty Plaza in Manhattan. Tribeca X celebrates the intersection of storytelling, advertising, and innovation, spotlighting the very best brand stories of the year.

“There are thousands and thousands of patients benefiting from NYU Langone Orthopedics,” said Joseph D. Zuckerman, MD, the Walter A. L. Thompson Professor of Orthopedic Surgery in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, where he is also chair. “This film shows the trajectory of our department as an amalgamation, with roots in the beginning of the field at Bellevue in the 1850s to a humble specialty hospital in a Harlem brownstone to a powerhouse of innovation and influence in the field and in our patients’ lives. We are pleased that Tribeca Festival is honoring this special film that tells our story.”

The film’s narrative chronicles the beginning of NYU Langone’s orthopedic history with Lewis A. Sayre, who was appointed as Bellevue Medical College’s first professor of orthopedic surgery in 1861. Dr. Sayre is considered by many to be the father of orthopedic surgery in North America. His innovative treatments included developing a treatment for scoliosis by putting patients in traction and wrapping them in casts. From there, his trainees Herman and Henry Frauenthal, sons of a shoemaker, started NYU’s first orthopedic hospital, the Jewish Hospital for Deformities and Joint Diseases, in a brownstone in Harlem. This ultimately became NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital.

On the Shoulders of Giants also highlights NYU Langone’s commitment to diversifying the field by spotlighting Marian Frauenthal Sloane, Herman’s daughter, who became the first female surgeon to publish in a U.S. orthopedic journal, a feat she accomplished while sewing bandages for the hospital in her spare time. The film also features its physicians bringing orthopedic innovation to the United States by traveling the world—as far as Siberia—to provide patients with the best possible techniques at a later iteration of the hospital—the Hospital for Joint Diseases—when it moved to its present location.

“It has been a privilege to work on the legacy of NYU Langone Orthopedics,” said filmmaker Peter Sanders. “The nearly 40 interviews that were conducted with specialists in the various subspecialties have created a rich tapestry of ideas and discussions of procedures in a wide range of areas of expertise. The film is both an oral history of the department and its hospitals and its institutional predecessors and a document that preserves the contributions of clinicians and scientists.”

The historical parts of the movie are interspersed with an up-close view of real orthopedic surgeries, expertly correcting sometimes brutally traumatic injuries or repairing an athlete’s injury to get him back into the game. Other bird’s-eye views into the operating room show how the institution’s surgeons pioneered innovative techniques such as arthroscopic surgery.

“Our doctors are truly engineers of the human body—whether they’re helping the average person get back on their feet or fine-tuning an elite athlete to perform their best,” said Kenneth A. Egol, MD, the Joseph E. Milgram Professor of Orthopedic Surgery in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, where he is also vice chair. “What we’ve achieved in patient care, research, and innovation is the result of standing on the shoulders of orthopedic giants highlighted in this film, and we are so grateful for Peter’s vision in creating this work.”

NYU Langone Orthopedics continues to deliver the world’s best treatments, including the most advanced sports medicine care and robotic techniques. It also trains more orthopedic surgeons than any other institution in the United States. NYU Langone is ranked No. 4 in the nation for orthopedics by U.S. News & World Report, and NYU Langone Orthopedics performs more than 34,000 orthopedic procedures annually by more than 200 orthopedic physician faculty.

See the film’s trailer on Vimeo.

Media Inquiries

Marlene Naanes
Phone: 646-754-5016
Marlene.Naanes@NYULangone.org