How can the Blender API be used to access Blender from another application? Take Openshot for example. It has some form of Blender integration and is written in Python.

I'm not sure if it directly accesses Blender's API or if it simply generates a .blend file and then launches Blender (as it seems to do with Inkscape for SVG titles).

What I would like to know is:


Can an application make use of the Blender API from outside of a running instance of Blender?
If yes, how?
Following the link in CharlesL's answer, I was able to find a Wiki entry that dashes my hopes. Apparently this is not possible in the way I had hoped.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User%3aIdeasman42/BlenderAsPyModule