LOS ANGELES— IF 1994 WERE A MOVIE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN called "Revenge of the Little Ones." Thirty-three Academy Award nominations this year -- including two for best picture, two for best actor, all five nominations for best supporting actress and all five for original screenplay -- went to films that were not made by the major studios. And that's not counting all five nominees for best foreign-language film. Paramount Pictures, a major studio with 17 nominations, had to settle for second to scrappy Miramax, an independent that had 22.

Those nominations and the box-office success of movies like Miramax's "Pulp Fiction" and Gramercy's "Four Weddings and a Funeral" have pushed independent films, not for the first time, into the spotlight. Paradoxically, this has happened when the line separating studio and independent has become blurred.

Miramax, the feistiest and most successful of the independent companies, was purchased a year ago by Disney. New Line has been bought by Ted Turner. Universal is a co-owner of Gramercy. And 20th Century Fox has just created Searchlight Pictures, which will make movies aimed at sophisticated adults.

When the nominating committee for the independent film world's top prizes -- the Independent Spirit Awards -- met last December, its toughest decision was not which movies to nominate but which movies to make eligible. "Because of the murkier origins of films today, the board looked for solutions that didn't cut off one's nose to spite one's face," says Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, who was the chairman of the Spirit Awards nominating committee.

One solution was to throw out the standard definition of an independent film: that it was not financed by a major studio. Instead, the new regulations allowed the committee to consider "percentage of financing from non-studio sources," along with "uniqueness of vision," "economy of means" and "original, provocative subject matter." Among the movies declared eligible were New Line's "Dumb and Dumber," Woody Allen's $19 million "Bullets Over Broadway" and "I Like It Like That," a low-budget first feature that was made by a major studio, Columbia Pictures.

The Independent Spirit Awards (which are administered by the Independent Feature Project/West) are handed out two days before the Oscars, an act of self-promotion that may be unnecessary this year. The ceremony on Saturday, to be held in a tent on the Santa Monica beach, sold out its $10,000 tables and $125 tickets immediately.

"Ten years ago, the I.F.P. director used to pop her own popcorn and take it to our screenings in an effort to get people to come see independent films," says Dawn Hudson, director of the Independent Feature Project (I.F.P.)/West. "The Spirit Awards used to be 200 people crammed into a restaurant. Now we've sold all 1,100 tickets and have a waiting list." The event is sponsored this year by the Independent Film Channel, Bravo, Entertainment Weekly magazine and Panavision.

Portions of the event will be broadcast on March 27 on the Bravo cable channel, during commercial breaks in the Academy Award telecast. Among the actors who will present Spirit Awards this year are Bridget Fonda and Linda Fiorentino.

After 10 years of handing out awards, however, the Independent Spirit can hardly be mistaken for the Oscars. Although Oscar nominees like "Bullets Over Broadway" got four Spirit nominations and "Pulp Fiction" got five, "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle," which also got five, was nominated as best picture by the Spirit Awards, and shut out by the Academy. "Eat Drink Man Woman," which got only one Academy nomination, for best foreign-language film, led the Spirit nominations with six, including best picture. And the fifth film nominated for a Spirit Award for best feature, "Wes Craven's New Nightmare," would never have crossed the collective mind of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

First-time film makers are not required to compete against Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino at the Spirit Awards, which hand out prizes for best first film, screenplay, director and performance. Nominees include "Clerks," which Kevin Smith made for $27,000. Mr. Smith is now shooting his second movie, the $10 million "Mall Rats," for Gramercy Pictures. The movie will star Shannen Doherty.

"The purpose of the I.F.P. was -- working within the belly of the beast -- to foster the kind of film making that was outside the studio system, that worked forward from a passion rather than backward from a deal memo," says Howard Rodman, a screenwriter and former I.F.P./West board member. "Now, at festivals like Sundance, the studios view independent film makers as a farm team. The industry is always looking for people who make inexpensive, interesting films so they can offer them employment on films that are neither."

The blurring of the line between independent films and studio movies is exhilarating to Harvey Keitel, an actor who has usually chosen the lower salaries and more complex characters that are the bailiwick of independent films. "The idea is to synthesize the spirit of the independent with what the majors have to offer," says Mr. Keitel, who will be seen next summer in Miramax's low-budget "Smoke" and in Universal's not-so-low-budget "Clockers," directed by Spike Lee. "Don't forget that Tom Pollock of Universal made 'The Last Temptation of Christ' six years ago when nobody else would."