Independent Spirit Still Taking Shape : Movies: What constitutes an independent film keeps changing, and so do the parameters for the awards honoring those works.

When 1,100 independent filmmakers and guests gather Saturday in a Santa Monica beach tent for the 10th annual Independent Spirit Awards, they’ll be celebrating a roller-coaster decade that has taken them from near-disaster to unparalleled prosperity. Sponsored by the Independent Features Project/West, the Spirit Awards mirror the tumultuous recent history of non-studio filmmaking.

The Spirit Awards have grown from a small get-together at a restaurant in West Hollywood to a large seaside blowout, televised on cable’s Bravo and attended by Hollywood’s best and brightest. You’re as likely to find mainstream talents Jodie Foster and Oliver Stone there as offbeat ones like Greg Araki (“The Living End”) and John Waters.

That’s in keeping with the big changes in American independent film in the last few years, according to producer and IFP board member Barbara Boyle. “We were once the minor leagues. Now we’re in the majors.”

Indeed, several independents are offshoots of major companies. Miramax was bought by Disney and Ted Turner acquired New Line; Polygram and Universal created Gramercy and 20th Century Fox launched Searchlight. Sony Pictures Classics was created by the same company that owns Columbia and TriStar.

Many in the Hollywood creative community, such as directors Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh and actors John Travolta and Bruce Willis, now commute regularly between studio and independent films. So does Harvey Keitel, who chairs this year’s awards along with Jodie Foster. He sees this commingling as a positive sign. “We’re colleagues and have to help each other,” he says. “In a sense we’re learning together and can teach each other.

“Audiences, too, have become more sophisticated and receptive to the personal story that is the hallmark of independent movies,” Keitel says. Even in remote areas that still don’t show independent films in theaters, video stores now stock these titles and they are played on some cable networks.

Ironically, as recently as five years ago, the independent film community teetered on the verge of collapse with the dissolution of several companies, including Atlantic Releasing, Cinecom and Alive. Sources of independent financing dried up and the IFP was faced with the prospect of shutting its doors. “Then we became entrepreneurial,” says independent filmmaker Ted Thomas, another IFP board member.

Re-conceiving the Spirit Awards as a fund-raiser, the IFP chased down the support of a wide variety of sponsors, including Panavision, Kodak, Amblin and HBO. Their cause was helped by such break-out independent hits as Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies and videotape.”

“Independent films became fashionable,” says Barbara Boyle, “because the profit ratio on movies like ‘The Wedding Banquet’ and ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ made investors sit up and take notice.”

Slowly, Thomas says, “we made inroads into the studio system and figured out alternative ways to finance projects on our own. Now the Spirit Awards represent everyone from Miramax to no-budget filmmakers.”

Some of the more than 120 submissions for the Spirit Awards this year were financed by such deep-pocket companies as Miramax or New Line, whose “Pulp Fiction” and “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” respectively, are among the best picture nominees.

Also represented are the labors of such filmmakers as Kevin Smith, whose “Clerks” cost about the same as a mid-size U.S.-made car (it was subsequently picked up by Miramax).

Just because the organization has matured doesn’t mean the growing pains have stopped, says Spirit Awards chairwoman Cathy Main. The parameters of what constitutes an independent film are always changing, she points out.

For instance, although the Spirit Awards are ostensibly a forum for American independents, one of this year’s best picture nominees, “Eat Drink Man Woman,” is a foreign-language film. But it qualifies for best picture consideration because it was produced by two Americans, James Shamus and Ted Hope. This has resulted in some carping, since such films as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “The Madness of King George” were eligible only in the best foreign film category. (Both are English-language productions from Britain.)

But, like the Spirit Awards themselves, the categories and the nominating process are constantly evolving, says Dawn Hudson, IFP/West’s executive director. There are ongoing discussions of how to make the awards more inclusive in the future, she says.

Part of this again reflects the constant changes in the nature of independent film. “It’s no longer just financing that makes a film independent,” Thomas says. “It’s also an aesthetic.”

Which is why Darnell Martin’s “I Like It Like That” is a Spirit nominee. Although it was financed and distributed by Columbia Pictures, its spirit and vision are a model of non-formulaic filmmaking, Thomas says.

“Every time we think we’re losing our mandate,” Boyle says, “we remind ourselves that people like Greg Araki are still making movies with a personal vision for $26,000.”

“One of the diseases in this business is to imitate what makes money,” Keitel says. “But there’s always a new voice like a Quentin Tarantino around the corner to combat that.”

The same mandate to be non-formulaic applies to the Spirit Awards. “We’re working to retain our edge, our irreverence,” Main says. This year’s ceremony, hosted by actor Kevin Pollock, will return to the laid-back sands of Santa Monica, and attendance has been scaled back slightly from the last couple of years. Further expansion would have brought more money into the IFP’s coffers but at the risk of destroying the event’s intimacy, those involved say.

“If we turn on the Oscars two days later and find our ceremony was a knockoff of that,” Hudson says, “then we’ll know we’ve failed.”