Richard P. Rogers; Documentarian Led Harvard Film Center

Richard Pendleton Rogers, 57, director of the Film Studies Center at Harvard University and a documentary filmmaker, died Saturday of melanoma at his summer home in Wainscott, N.Y.

Rogers made several films for PBS, including documentaries on William Carlos Williams, William Kennedy and Wallace Stevens. With his wife, documentary photographer Susan Meiselas, he made “Pictures From a Revolution,” a film about Nicaragua.

Born in New York City, Rogers graduated from Harvard in 1957 and was a Fulbright scholar at the Royal College of Arts in London. He earned a master’s degree in education at Harvard and taught film and photography there. In 1974, he and Willard Van Dyke launched the film program at State University of New York at Purchase.

Other films by Rogers include “Cadmium Yellow,” about the lives of artists in New York City; “A Midwife’s Tale,” which recounted the day-to-day events of Martha Ballard, a Revolutionary War-era midwife; and “Elephants,” which examined his family’s origins. At the time of his death he was working on a film titled “Windmill,” about the community of his summer home on Long Island.