Syria violence claims talented young filmmaker BEIRUT - He was an adventurer and artist, with an easy smile and a passion for travel and filmmaking. He was a gifted computer webmaster, but couldn't be chained to a desk. He took a motorcycle journey from his native Syria to India, getting gloriously lost along the way in war-torn Afghanistan. Last year, he won a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to pursue graduate film studies at Syracuse University. But his tormented homeland kept drawing him back. "Syria needs me," he said in a computer chat with a friend in his hometown of Damascus, the capital, last December, as he considered leaving disconcertingly calm Syracuse, N.Y., for the tumult of Syria. Or maybe I need her more. Bassel Shahade, 28, a restless soul who reminded one of his U.S. classmates of the dreamy young Ernesto "Che" Guevara - in this case armed with a lens, not a gun - was killed last week in the Syrian city of Homs, epicenter of the uprising, apparently while filming the violence. He had gone to Homs to document the rebellion there while training cadres of "citizen journalists," amateur videographers who daily risk their lives providing firsthand accounts on YouTube that have helped define the Syrian upheaval. It remains unclear whether Shahade fell victim to random shelling or sniper fire. At least one of his film proteges reportedly fell with him. His death left a profound void and a flood of tributes on Facebook pages and other social-media sites. "I'm still hoping someone will call and say the news was false," said Lana Hijazi, a Palestinian film student who studied with him last year at Syracuse's College of Visual and Performing Arts. Shahade's image - a jaunty smile framed by unkempt, dark curls - put an alternative face on a struggle increasingly identified with bearded gunmen. Friends say Shahade remained committed to peaceful change and embodied the many Web-savvy, young, middle-class dissidents who have faced brutal repression in Syria. "How many talented people shall we lose to have Syria liberated?" read one Facebook posting. Wrote another heartbroken acquaintance: "It takes a person a lifetime to find such a friend." Shahade didn't fit the Syrian revolutionary profile. He possessed a precious U.S. visa, an escape route available to the privileged few. Moreover, he was a well-educated Damascus Christian in a rebellion that has taken deep root among alienated Sunni Muslim masses away from the capital. A Christian minority terrified of an Islamist takeover remains a pillar of support for President Bashar Assad. Many observers see Syria headed inexorably down an Iraq-style path of sectarian mayhem and slaughter. But Shahade often told people of how Muslim activists not only accepted him, but sought to afford him special treatment. At raucous and volatile street demonstrations, he confided to one friend, Muslim protesters would form a circle to protect him and his Christian co-participants, evidence that the revolution was not about sects and ancient enmities. Having studied computer science at Damascus University, Shahade landed a job in 2008 as a Web developer in the capital with the United Nations. He was also a co-founder of a film club and decided he wanted to direct movies, a desire solidified as the antigovernment uprising began in March 2011. As he recounted to The Times this year, he was among a group of Damascus Christians distributing pamphlets and pasting pro-democracy stickers on the walls in Bab Touma, the capital's ancient Christian quarter. He and others traveled to opposition strongholds in the restive suburbs to join in demonstrations outside mosques after Friday's Muslim prayers. "We were very welcome there," Shahade recalled in the January interview with The Times at a Beirut cafe. But he wasn't all about politics. He reveled in wandering the winding alleys of old Damascus. He took his bike on overland jaunts as far as Aleppo, 220 miles to the north. Before going to the United States, he fulfilled a dream of taking a marathon motorcycle trek all the way to India, more than 2,000 miles, on his battered Russian bike, named Lenin.